Q: FAQ: Compiler support for 8051 based System-on-Chip devices (SoC)

8051 based System-on-Chip (SoC) devices are supported by the EW8051 compiler from IAR (www.iar.com)

An evaluation version of the compiler can be downloaded from:
www.iar.com/p882/p882_eng.php

The SoC device contains an on-chip debugging module, this interface directly with the IAR C-Spy debugger that is included with the IAR Embedded Workbench. No other compilers are supported with on-chip debugging support.

The TI Z-stack and TIMAC are partially supplied as a library compiled with the IAR compiler and can only be used with this compiler

It is possible to use other 8051 compilers to write code for the SoC devices, but they will not be supported with on-chip support.

Please be aware there are some issues for the customer to use SDCC if they are developing custom code.
The only usable open source compiler for 8051 is sdcc (http://sdcc.sourceforge.net/). Although sdcc compiles for 8051,
one of the primary challenges is defining all of the TI 8051 specific registers, headers, etc. Although this is not a
difficult operation, it is time-consuming. The second challenge is introducing the restrictions that the TI 8051 SoC memory
model places on the programmer--such as which memory banks are active and when.