ARM Microcontrollers Support Adobe Flash

  

ARM's microcontroller family now support Adobe Flash Player 10.

For engineers building a Graphical User Interface (GUI), Adobe offers a software library that plays Flash files on ARM cores. The Flash file must first be developed using Adobe's Flash CS4. Knowledge of Adobe's ActionScript is required to build Flash files.

The ARM core must be running a file system, such as Linux, Windows CE or Windows Embedded, Google's Android, or Symbian. The engineer's Flash file is loaded onto the ARM's file system. Flash formats such as .swf and .flv are supported.

This targets Flash played on ARM smartphones as well as other ARM-based mobile phones, and consumer devices. Support for Flash Player 10 on ARM processors allows the ARM device to play Flash animations in the GUI. Mobile browsers can play Flash embedded in websites such as YouTube.

The ARM Flash Player 10 software library is available directly from Adobe. Source code for ARM Flash Player 10 is also available. The device manufacturer is responsible for updating Flash Player in their application and insuring Flash applet compatibility with Adobe's Flash Player updates. This is critical, as Adobe occasionally has enountered problems with backwards compatibility during Flash Player updates.

ARM's processors also support Microsoft Silverlight, which is programmed in ASP.NET. Silverlight support has been growing rapidly because of ASP.NET's ease of use, especially when compared to Adobe's ActionScript language which has a very high learning curve.