Commercial use of Hercules platform - software

Vladimir Cundekovic said:

1) Code Composer Studio

If I understood, it is free of charge? Even when it is commercially used?

For the most common use case - yes.   This would be:  "Can I use the free CCS license to develop, build, and sell a product that
is based on my own code compiled to run on a TI processor"

For CCSv6, the free license for Hercules development is only limited to the lower end emulators.  So if you want to upgrade to a faster emulator to be more efficient you needed to purchase a CCS license.  But even then the price was very reasonable.

For CCSv7 I think the deal may even be 'better'  but its so new I haven't digested the information myself.  It would be better to ask on the Code Composer Studio forum.

Now - as always there is the potential for open source software components to be used in demos, or in CCS itself which is eclipse based.  So you need to be dilligent about understanding the licensing of any 3rd party software that you build into your application..  but this is a different question than whether or not you can use the IDE (Compiler, Debugger) to build a commercial application.

There should be a manifest file included with every TI software distribution that lists what open source components and licenses are included in the package; this is usually an HTML or PDF document in the distribution's install folder with the name 'manifest' ...

Vladimir Cundekovic said:

2) HALCOGEN

There are 2 HALCOGEN version: basic and safety. For safety critical applications, I need to use SafeTI HALCOGEN version - which has a price of 12000$. Is this right?

No not exactly.

There is HalCoGen,  and the HalCoGen compliance support package.

HalCoGen itself is similar to CCS.   The IDE itself is based on open source components and some proprietary TI software.

But the code that is output by HalCoGen -- the driver code -- is generally all licensed under a TI BSD license which is open source but minimally invasive and really like the 'type O+' blood type - you can mix it with pretty much anything.

This is all free of charge.

The HalCoGen Compliance support package is a different beast - it is something that helps assist you with safety certification of the HalCoGen generated code.   This includes licenses for some third party test frameworks that TI has to pay for so that's why there is a fee associated with this package.

You can download a 'Demo' of the CSP to understand exactly what you are getting, right underneath the HalCoGen download.

You can always use HalCoGen and do the software safety compliance work yourself if you think the price of the CSP isn't justified.  It's just an option that is available to speed the development process for some customers.

Vladimir Cundekovic said:

3) SafeTI diag library Is this part of HALCOGEN? Or it is separate product? I guess it is library for safety related functions? We plan to use Profinet, CAN or Modbus protocol. Are those protocols supported by this library? Can you tell me about licencing/prices?

Separate product.   This library focuses on the drivers for the 'diagnostics' that are built into the device,  whereas HalCoGen focuses on the 'functional' logic like serial ports, timers, etc.

And the functional logic has quite a bit of configuration so HalCoGen is GUI that allows you to statically configure (offline) the peripherals and generate just the code for that configuration. 

With the diagnostic logic there's not really a lot of configuration other than picking the tests to run so the SafeTI Diagnostic library doesn't have a configuration GUI or code generator like HalCoGen, it's more of a traditional Library.

In practice you would use HalCoGen to configure the device to execute your application function, and then link in the diagnostic library to enable you to perform the diagnostic functions necessary to achieve your desired diagnostic coverage level.

From a price structure the SafeTI Diag library does follow the same idea as HalCoGen:

   - library itself is free of charge

   - compliance support package has a charge associated, mainly to cover the cost of the third party tools that are included.

   - there is a demo package available for the CSP so you can see exactly what is included before purchasing.

Vladimir Cundekovic said:

4) DSP library

We will do some digital signal processing. Do you have any DSP library for Hercules? Can you tell me about licencing/prices?

This is free of charge.   Please read the license terms carefully.  

Vladimir Cundekovic said:

5) SIL3 certification

Are those libraryes SIL3 certified? 

No none of our software is certified.  Instead we provide compliance support packages for the major software components to help you achieve certification faster.