What PSoCs, MCUs/MCPUs , FPGAs and IoT boards are Linux friendly?

[cdev]

I'm casting around for interesting new hardware to experiment with and would like to learn more about both FPGAs and IoT platforms/devices.

But I'm on Linux and want to remain with it as my main platform. I can run Wine, I don't want to buy Windows and run Windows in a VM.  Given those constraints, which platforms have development tools and are supported by a toolchain that I can use on my platform of choice? Assuming that I had no other platforms available (which is more or less true)

I know that excludes a lot of good hardware, even now.

[nctnico]

Xilinx ISE runs on Linux just fine. The same for ARM's GCC compiler (see launchpad.net).

[ataradov]

Altera Quartus works on Linux perfectly as well.

Development for ARM is super easy on Linux. Programming the part may be a bit harder, but there are tools for all major vendors.

[NorthGuy]

Xilinx's Vivado is supposed to run on Linux, but I only tried ISE.

Microchip's MPLAB X runs on Linux very well - much better than on Windows actually.

[dgtl]

Vivado runs fine as well. At least 2017.1 and 2016.4 run as well as on Windows.
In case of Altera, the last time I used it (approx 5 years ago), the Linux one was more capable - the Windows one did not support the parallel port byteblaster anymore, linux one did. At that time it was handy - the newer jtag adapters were in use by colleagues and it was either wait or get another one ordered (and my machine happened to have serial port card with parallel port on it too). On both Altera ISE and Xilinx Vivado, the synthesis speed seems to be similar on both platforms, did not do any proper measurements though.
uC tools:
* nxp lpcxpresso / mcuxpresso run well on linux
* silabs (energy micro) stuff worked, too
* st system workbench has linux support, but I havent tried it myself (I use generic arm-gcc and my own scripts for stm32)
* cypress stuff is windows-only. Did not even work under wine. Runs well in vm (virtualbox). The uc us so complex (fpga-like reconfigurable peripherals), that without the vendors tools it would be almost impossible to do proper development ground-up. Even command-line-only tools to synthesize the hw and verilog sources for peripherals would be ok to have, but they don't seem to like this idea, instead forcing their gui on everybody.
* microchip (atmel) stuff was also windows-only. I have used generic arm-gcc and avr-gcc under linux without problems.

As said, just compiling stuff for ARM or AVR is not an issue at all under linux. You need a compiler and the register header file, that can be usually extracted from the vendors toolchain. Then you need the linker script, but that is simple to do. Finally you need the initialization code as the arm micros usually need a lot of initialization to be done by user code. This can be usually taken from vendors toolchain, alternatively it can be programmed manually but this takes a bit of work.
The programming / JTAG debug part is sometimes a little complicates as those micros do not have programming interface, instead via the JTAG the developer just uploads the program that runs on the micro and the data to flash and that program is executed then on the micro to write the data from ram to flash. As this little program comes with the programming tool, it needs to be written again and again for all tools. At least openocd supports a lot of ARM micros and this can be reused with different physical adapters, but this support usually is third-party developed, not from the vendor.
Apart from that, just grab a arm-gcc bare metal compiler, that is capable of the required cortex-m micro ISA and compile what you need.

[rstofer]

There's a Linux version of Lattice Diamond.  Like all things Linux/USB related, YMMV

[ataradov]

I never had problems with Altera tools under Linux, especially after acquisition by Intel, when they just dropped that license requirement for free versions.

And I just got Lattice Diamond to work on Mint. It was not that hard, actually. I'm not sure what went wrong the first time I tried to do the same, and failed.

[julian1]

For fpga, Lattice ice40, verilog compiler and p&r is just an apt-get install on debian.

apt-get install yosys
apt-get install arachne-pnr
apt-get install fpga-icestorm

 Demo: A fully open source flow for iCE40 FPGAs


For linux mcu, I like orange-pi pc and plus - anything based on Allwinner H3. Currently running headless debian - with mainline uboot, and mainline kernel. still need to wait for kernel 4.10 for ethernet patches to be accepted upstream, else you can patch 4.9.

http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort

[cdev]

Thank you for all this help!

I'm still indecisive about the FPGAs probably because the one that seems the most interesting to me is the cypress 5 lp series and its not Linux friendly.. but

(Mr. big spender here!) I did order an "STM32F103C8T6 ARM STM32 Minimum System Development Board"  which looks like an exceptionally good deal for a bit more than $2 - and I also got an

ESP8266 like the one in Daves recent video.. with the idea of hooking it up to some of my other household junk using unused  wifi access point that is so old it doesnt support wireless g so I dare not use it for actual internet but it will be fine for internet of thangs.

 "This is D1 mini, it is a mini WIFI board based on ESP-8266EX.
11 digital input/output pins, all pins have interrupt/pwm/I2C/one-wire
 supported(except D0)
 1 analog input(3.3V max input)
 a Micro USB connection" and two very cheap RTCs..  and two small super cheap 128x64 OLED displays in white.. Ive never done anything with a raw graphic display


A lot of potential fun for very little money..

[TK]

Beaglebone Black and Beaglebone Green work with debian embedded linux

[legacy]

interesting ... (but) not Linux friendly

Frankly I find this mind attitude a bit childish. If you are in business you know that you can cry as long as you want, at the end there are fields where linux is completely ignored by the industry, they have their reasons to do so, so you have to deal with it.

And what is your reaction? Oh, If it's not linux supported, but still very interesting as offered capabilities and features, then I won't use it as I as I care more in linux-friendly.

Is it your main priority? So here we are, and let's start looking for the last freaking alternative!

If you want to stay in business, be prepared to learn the little lesson: sometimes there are no alternatives since there are a lot of situations when you find something very interesting, useful, damn productive, and ... it's neither supported by linux nor it's opensource.

What will you do? Stay in your cave?

[ebclr]

Cave is what they like

In today's world, you can play quite easy with both system on the same machine, taking the best that each one can offer using virtualization like VMware or VirtualBox, or even  dual boot, but those Richard Stallman fanboys refuse to accept a wider option even as a second platform, losing access to millions of products made just for that "evil" system who have the biggest availability of anything. Wanna play Psoc, no way to play on penguin, and Psoc is not alone, have a lot of powerful titles especially on engineering area, that runs only on windows. Why not at least set a Windows virtual machine  on linux and have access to the mainstream world

[Zero999]

I don't want to buy Windows and run Windows in a VM.

Are you sure you need to buy Windoze? Most PCs come with it pre-installed, so it's quite likely you already have a licence, whether you're using it at the moment or not. However if you've formatted the drive your machine I don't know how you can go about legally getting a copy.

If you built the machine yourself or purchased one with Linux pre-installed then that's a different matter, although it's still possible you already have a different machine with a Windows licence, which although M$ says isn't transferable in the EULA, I don't believe that clause is legal (assuming you actually care) but I'm not a lawyer.

Another thing you might want to try is a free Winblows 10 VM which M$ originally released to enable developers to test thie Edge browser.
https://betanews.com/2015/08/18/microsoft-releases-free-windows-10-virtual-machines/
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/

[NorthGuy]

IMHO, Microsoft went way over board in restricting users in Windows 10. Not to mention mandatory spying and backdooring. I don't think this has a chance to change.

Therefore I'm keeping Windows 7, but I also have plans to migrate to Linux. I already have several Linux machines, I gradually migrate all my workflows to Linux. I think 5-6 years from now it'll be all Linux, except for testing boxes.

I don't think I'm the only one who's not going to accept Windows 10. In the past 6 months, the market share of Windows 10 hardly ever grew, and this is despite the fact that all new computers are sold with Windows 10:

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=11&qpcustomb=0

Of course, Linux market share in the overall PC market is only 2%, but this includes all the housewives and bureaucrats. If you look at engineers only, I think the Linux share is much greater and I think it's growing.

It is enough software that can run on Linux, and it is stable enough. If something doesn't run on Linux, the hell with it.

[rstofer]

Win 10 grew because of new machines, not so much from upgrades.  There is no good reason to upgrade from Win 7 but there may be from Win 8 and 8.1 (I never used them).

Still, in about a year, Win 10 swamped, by a factor of at least 12 (probably closer to 25), the number of Linux desktops and Linux has been around for 25 years!  Linux has been around but, really, nobody cares.

Linux doesn't even have enough desktops to be listed as a separate category like Mac OSx.  It is just lumped with 'other'.  And the percentage of 'other' is dropping!

In 2020, Win 7 will no longer be supported by Microsoft.  There will be a good reason to upgrade at that point.

I have Linux on  3 machines and I use them from time to time as servers or for writing code.  I like using gedit and make.  Clean and simple!  OTOH, I am kind of fond of Eclipse and I have it running on both flavors.  I also installed the bash shell under Win 10.  It comes in handy from time to time.

[nctnico]

Linux doesn't even have enough desktops to be listed as a separate category like Mac OSx.  It is just lumped with 'other'.  And the percentage of 'other' is dropping!

For generic computing that is true but Linux is definitely growing for engineering use and hence manufacturers of typical engineering software have Linux versions available for a good reason (= it makes them money).

[rstofer]

Linux doesn't even have enough desktops to be listed as a separate category like Mac OSx.  It is just lumped with 'other'.  And the percentage of 'other' is dropping!

For generic computing that is true but Linux is definitely growing for engineering use and hence manufacturers of typical engineering software have Linux versions available for a good reason (= it makes them money).

Even then, the manufacturers have a hard time matching all distros.  I remember back about 12 years ago where Xilinx ISE would run on RedHat Enterprise (I believe) but was not guaranteed to run on any other distro.  Enterprise cost money and I was using RedHat Workstation.  I didn't even try...

So, these days, the manufacturers will pick a popular distro like Debian (maybe Ubuntu) and that's the incantation they target.

I used to have a huge problem with my NVIDIA drivers and every time the kernel changed, I had to recompile (or whatever was going on) the driver code to match the new headers.  It seemed like the kernel was changing weekly and this NVIDIA thing was a huge PITA.  I just quit upgrading the kernel.

You're right, though, the manufacturers wouldn't bother writing a Linux variant if they didn't think there was a market out there.  They want to sell chips!

Universities tend to favor Linux (and anything else that is "free") and new engineers come from universities.  Of course the companies are going to target this segment.  Look at the student discounts on Adobe software.  Now I see they have Cloud versions that I could actually afford!

Autodesk, not so much.  Maya costs $185/month!

[legacy]

Psoc is not alone, have a lot of powerful titles especially on engineering area

Exactly!

Protel/Altium
SolidWorks
TinaDesign
Rhinoceros
VisualDSP++

Just to list a few Windows-only products I need.

[legacy]

I think 5-6 years from now it'll be all Linux

From my point of view it doesn't care which-OS, as the OS is just a tool for me. So, if they migrate all the software I need onto linux, then I will have no problem with it, but currently I am in the situation when I still see dependencies, there are applications which are available ONLY for windows, therefore I still take a Windows machine on hands instead of wasting my time in the silly attempts to workaround the problem.

Dual boot laptop. I have recently found I can access the linux partition from Windows through VirtualBOX. This, combined with MabaXterm, is extremely productive.

[nctnico]

Just use Virtualbox and you can have both Windows and Linux running simultaneously while sharing files over the network (which is internal so extremely fast).

[timb]

Just use Virtualbox and you can have both Windows and Linux running simultaneously while sharing files over the network (which is internal so extremely fast).

Exactly. I use VMWare on OS X to run various Linux and BSD distros (the install sizes can be so small that I can have a separate VM for each build environment), plus Windows 7 (for modern stuff like DipTrace and PSoC Creator) and XP (for older software).

I keep all my VMs on a USB3 connected 200GB SSD, so it's fast. VMWare can share any folder/drive/network share directly between the host and guest, so working with files between VMs is cake.

There's so much Windows only engineering software that I would be severely limiting myself if I didn't use a Windows VM.

I bought a license for XP Pro and 7 Pro when they came out, but have since misplaced or lost the license keys, so I ended overriding the default VMWare BIOS.rom file with a ROM from Lenovo that contained SLIC tables and then just used a activator and matching key. Only took me a few seconds and I didn't have to bother with 7 phoning home for the activation and all that nonsense.

(And frankly, even if I didn't own a legitimate copy of 7 I wouldn't feel bad about that, as I've given more than enough money to MS over the years. I bought a copy of Windows ME and Windows 8, so they owe me! XD)

[legacy]

Just use Virtualbox and you can have both Windows and Linux running simultaneously

It's better accessing linux files from a native ext3 partition. VirtualBox has no documentation about it but it's possible and it'safer because if Windows crashes you won't have a lot of chunk which are still stored in the disk-cache. Having them parked in RAM is the typical solution used by VirtualBox to handle its virtual disks.

In short: VirtualBox is great, but accessing a physical partition is better.

VirtualBox also has a few problem with USB-endpoints, therefore when I have to develop something on the usb bus, I prefer shutting-down Windows and reboot the machine from linux.

while sharing files over the network (which is internal so extremely fast).

I do it, I share my files over CIFS (SAMBA) from the laptop to a dedicated server which also offers NFS and sshfs. I am fine. CIFS from Windows to Linux suffers some timestamp issue (as well as it requires a fine tuning when you have to mount it from linux), not a critical problem, just annoying.

[technix]

As long as LLVM/clang, GCC or SDCC work for a target microcontroller and a Linux-based programming and/or debugging solution exist, it works under Linux. In fact the list below covers both Linux and Apple macOS.

Platform	Toolchain	Debugger/Programmer Hardware	Debugger/Programmer Software	IDE (optional)
ARM	GCC or LLVM/clang	SEGGER J-Link	SEGGER J-Link or OpenOCD	Eclipse CDT
ARM Cortex-M	GCC or LLVM/clang	CMSIS-DAP	OpenOCD	Eclipse CDT
8-bit AVR	AVR-GCC	AVRISP mkII or Atmel ICE	avrdude (program only)	Eclipse CDT
8-bit AVR	AVR-GCC	Atmel ICE	avarice	Eclipse CDT
8-bit PIC	xc8 or SDCC	PICkit 3	MPLAB X	MPLAB X
16-bit PIC	xc16	PICkit 3	MPLAB X	MPLAB X
32-bit PIC	xc32	PICkit 3	MPLAB X	MPLAB X
32-bit PIC	xc32	SEGGER J-Link (v9)	SEGGER J-Link	MPLAB X
32-bit PIC	MIPS-GCC	SEGGER J-Link (v9)	SEGGER J-Link	Eclipse CDT
MSP430	MSP430-GCC	(the whatever tool came on my Launchpad)	OpenOCD?	Code Composer Studio?
STC 8051	SDCC	USB to UART adapter	stcgal (program only)	Eclipse CDT
8051	SDCC	MiniPro TL866	minipro	Eclipse CDT

On the FPGA front I only have experiences in Altera. Their Quartus line of tools works under Linux.

Most IoT boards I know off either uses some microcontroller listed above, or itself runs Linux. If the board runs Linux itself there will certainly be cross compiling toolchain available, and usual cross compiling development process follows.

[timb]

Just use Virtualbox and you can have both Windows and Linux running simultaneously

It's better accessing linux files from a native ext3 partition. VirtualBox has no documentation about it but it's possible and it'safer because if Windows crashes you won't have a lot of chunk which are still stored in the disk-cache. Having them parked in RAM is the typical solution used by VirtualBox to handle its virtual disks.

In VMWare you can disable the virtual disk cache; I'd imagine VirtualBox has a similar option.

I always disable the cache, as I find it uses a lot of RAM on the host, which slows down other applications you might be running, plus it's dangerous if you have a system crash or something (as you mentioned). I find that if you're running the guest from a SSD, disabling the write cache only slows down disk writes by less than 10%, which isn't that big of a deal. (Though if you're using a traditional hard drive it can slow writes down by over 60%.)

[technix]

Speaking of Linux, is there any way to put a MCU development environment into Android yet?

[legacy]

In VMWare you can disable the virtual disk cache; I'd imagine VirtualBox has a similar option.

Umm, it seems it's not really possible as VirtualBox still uses disk-cache internally. Also I have experimented catastrophic disasters when Windows is used in NTFS-compression mode. A colleague wanted to have the option enabled, and on a crash he lost the whole virtual hard drive. Gone completely corrupted. So, NTFS-compression is not a bad idea, I won't recommend it.


btw, the point was: why should I have to use a virtual hard drive when I can access a physical partition which makes me able to have the same rootfs usable in dual boot?

There are programs where you want to be more comfortable or need to access the GPU, or the real hardware without having to deal with a virtualizer, therefore if you share a partition you are already ready, since you can reboot the machine into linux and files will be already there.

[legacy]

The concern is if you screwed up, you can recover a VM from a snapshot.

Recover what? Also why should I have to duplicate the rootfs, which requires effort in order to have things compiled, installed, and configured (usually also hacked) in the proper why?

No sense.

With physical drive, that's hard to do.

Code: [Select]

nc blablala | dd if=hd-image of=/dev/sda*

Does the job.

Note the physical hd-image (raw) file can stay on a remote server as well as on a USB-stick.

A VM doesn't occupy the entire allocated space.

That's another annoying problem you have with virtualdisks as "sparse" doesn't work. Also, why should I have to waste harddrive space on my Windows's partition? *WHEN* I'd better have a native linux partition on the same harddrive which
1) can be accessed more safely from the virtualizer (directly access uses the LBA api)
2) can be accessed from a linux kernel without any-software layer under the hood
3) can be accessed from another machine if I hot-swap the harddrive

Again, no sense.

For GPU passthrough, you can do that with VT-d if you have 2 GPU cards, one for host, one for VM. VMWare esxi allows you to do this, so does unraid.

On XP the GPU support sucks, and can do professional job from MobaXterm? Like video editing?

[nctnico]

The concern is if you screwed up, you can recover a VM from a snapshot.

Recover what? Also why should I have to duplicate the rootfs, which requires effort in order to have things compiled, installed, and configured (usually also hacked) in the proper why?

No sense.

It makes perfect sense. Once the system is setup you make a snapshot and do that every time you make a big change to the system. When things go bad you restore the last-known-good snapshot. Works like a charm. I'm using XP in a VM and when it starts to behave bad I simply restore the snapshot and all is well again.

[ebclr]

"My points came from my own experience, which I'm NOT a heavy user of VM."


Vmware is extremely easy to use, and very reliable, can be used in both direction Linux <> WIN , WIN <> Linux , and  if you are a MAc guy, have fusion that is the Mac version of VMware.   

Vmware is the multimeter of software, there you can make records rollback, OS, Testing in different environments, software , networks , Control versioning, is simple a mandatory tool if you are involved in TI or software development   

[ebclr]

" Linux is definitely growing for engineering use"   

From 0.2% to 0,4% market share will be doubled 

[technix]

" Linux is definitely growing for engineering use"   

From 0.2% to 0,4% market share will be doubled 

A lot of new developments of software have been done on macOS... Well it is not Linux but it is still UNIX. And things may be as simple as recompile and run from macOS code base.

[ebclr]

Same on Windows

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/External%20binary%20packages%20%28Win64%20hosted%29/MSYS%20%2832-bit%29/

[technix]

Same on Windows

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/External%20binary%20packages%20%28Win64%20hosted%29/MSYS%20%2832-bit%29/

Not quite. I have much more success trying to move code between Linux (Ubuntu) and macOS. But whenever Windows gets involved it becomes troublesome. Especially when hardware access is involved, like serial ports or USB.

[ebclr]

Are you kidding, Windows just love serial ports, just need to remember that ports in windows are COM ports like COM1 ,COM2 not files

[technix]

Are you kidding, Windows just love serial ports, just need to remember that ports in windows are COM ports like COM1 ,COM2 not files

The termios are vastly different between UNIX and Windows. And don't get me started on the access permissions. Oh and you did not solve the USB problem.

[ebclr]

What is the USB problem?

http://libusb.info/

[technix]

What is the USB problem?

http://libusb.info/

You go ahead and try get a random libusb driver signed. Keep in mind that since Windows 8 it takes the user a few hoops to disable the mandatory driver code signing.

[ebclr]

You have at least 3 easy options

1) The drivers is available and signed if the supplier is smart enough to care about 90% of the market

2) You can easily tell windows to not enforce the rule

3) You sign the driver yourself

[technix]

You have at least 3 easy options

1) The drivers is available and signed if the supplier is smart enough to care about 90% of the market

Who is the vendor in the first place? Think from an end user's point of view.

2) You can easily tell windows to not enforce the rule

Significant numbers of loops and hoops have to be through. Think from an end user's point of view.

3) You sign the driver yourself

Can an average Joe with a computer be nothered to do this? Think from an end user's point of view.

[ebclr]

You are right, will be much easier for the average Joe learn Linux, open the terminal, install the device and  the software, Linux is made for Joe six pack, Windows is for PHD's only

[technix]

You are right, will be much easier for the average Joe learn Linux, open the terminal, install the device and  the software, Linux is made for Joe six pack, Windows is for PHD's only

Wrong. Windows device driver development is for megacorporations only. For average Joe there is Android (and in some cases iOS) so you got UNIX there.

[legacy]

EagleCAD needs EC_get_builtin_curves, defined by OpenSSL, so EagleCAD depends on OpenSSL, and it makes sense.

UAU 

[legacy]

At least on Windows you can simply provide a local dll, problem solved.

On linux 

I am going to fix && recompile { dev-libs/openssl, dev-libs/openssh } ebuilds, just to include what is required by EagleCAD, with the hope (finger crosses) that it won't break something.

[nctnico]

The fault is in trying to compile from source. Just look for a pre-build binary.

[legacy]

The fault is in trying to compile from source. Just look for a pre-build binary.

Do you really think I'd waste my time compiling stuff if I was allowed to use pre-build binaries? A bit naive, don't you think?

Now there is another freaking problem: Eagle needs some potentially patent encumbered code in a library that it depends on, and I am not sure *IF* I am authorized to recompile SLL with EC 

[technix]

At least on Windows you can simply provide a local dll, problem solved.

On linux 

I am going to fix && recompile { dev-libs/openssl, dev-libs/openssh } ebuilds, just to include what is required by EagleCAD, with the hope (finger crosses) that it won't break something.

This is a trick very well documented by Apple but it works on all UNIX: rpath.

[alm]

Or do what many closed source applications do, and launch via a shell script which sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH. You can also do this if you do not have the source to the binary.

[technix]

Or do what many closed source applications do, and launch via a shell script which sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH. You can also do this if you do not have the source to the binary.

rpath is much easier to use, if you have the source to the library and binary

It is extremely well documented by Apple because of the App Store distribution model: one portable container and one portable container only, no installer or putting libraries elsewhere allowed. Here is the typical layout of an application with libraries embedded (in Apple vocabulary libraries are called Frameworks:)

Code: [Select]

/Applications/MyApp.app/
    Contents/
        MacOS/MyApp (the actual executable)
        Info.plist
        Resources/
            MainWindow.nib (resources - this is just an example)
            AppIcon.icns
        Franeworks/
            MyFramework.framework/
                MyFramework (the actual dynamic library file)
                Frameworks/ (Dynamic library files can carries even more library files this way.)
In this case, the MyApp binary links to MyFramework dynamic library using a path like this:

Code: [Select]

$rpath/../Frameworks/MyFramework.framework/MyFramework

[alm]

Absolutely, rpath is superior if you have the source. The LD_LIBRARY_PATH can trick getting help third-party stuff to run.

[legacy]

As expected I am not authorized to change ssh 

EagleCAD v6.* is not affected.
EagleCAD v7 is affected, as it requires EC

Therefore I created a local library which contains EC, then I renamed /opt/eaglecad-v7.*/bin/eagle (the binary ELF application) into eagle-app, and created a wrapper with the name /opt/eaglecad-v7.*/bin/eagle

The wrapper uses app-admin/chrpath which modifies the rpath of the ELF executable.

The local library is within the same path. Problem solved.

[cdev]

Is there any chance that the manufacturers could write their IDEs in Java so it could be portable from one hardware platform to another?

You would think they would want to, with the popularity of Chromebooks, etc, in the educational arena.

[technix]

You don't even have to "write much" if you're wanting to make a high quality IDE.

Eclipse is based on JAVA and is open source and cross platform and has not only a "good" IDE but also tons of vertically integratable IDE / toolchain / development components.  Code editors.  Highlighting.  Reformatting.  Refactoring.   Auto completion.  Build tool integration.  Build configuration / management.  Model driven design tools.  Documentation tools.  SCM integration tools.  Reporting tools.  UML.  Diagramming.  etc. etc.  You could probably write a ton of NON programming related apps in the Eclipse framework and still get a lot of benefit from their vast UI and system tool arena.

Similar for NetBeans. (JAVA)

Then there's the CLR/NET framework which is sort of semi open source / portable and there are some integrable IDEs / source code editors written for it that could be extended.

Then there are things like (don't laugh) Emacs which is highly portable and has good code editing and build integration stuff etc.

Then you have the open toolchain stuff, GCC, LLVM/CLANG, LIBC, various small LIBC versions, GDB, etc.

Then you have the whole "web frameworks" where you can generate your tool as a MVC type approach and have your back end logic be portable and your presentation stuff handled entirely or mostly by active (or not) web based controls that just need one of the major browser engines to handle UI chrome / presentation / layout / rendering / DOM stuff.  Done.  You don't HAVE to use these to make cloud based solutions.  There's nothing stopping you from running the same code locally as an application environment.  So you design it once and have a cloud version AND a local portable installable version.

Then you've got nice portable frameworks like QT that can be used to make UIs that run on anything from a smartphone to a desktop.

I wonder how the MS Windows KDE version is doing these days?  Anyway...

I'm almost at a loss as to how / why in this day and age anyone writes anything that ISN'T cross platform portable with only very modest effort these days.  And even on a single platform you've got to be mindful of locales, different screen resolutions / sizes, different input devices / methods, etc. so your "extra effort" to handle a tablet vs. a netbook vs. a laptop vs. a desktop vs a browser is pretty small if you're doing it right.

Heck 90% of the time I don't necessarily want my IDE to dictate my code editor / browser choice anyway so they could save the effort and just make it plug in / interact nicely with whatever you run -- emacs / Visual Studio / sublime / vim / whatever and there you go, one less problem for developers and users.

And of course there's NO excuse for the *compilers* and other code generation / toolchain stuff not to be 100% standards compliant portable code so THAT shouldn't matter.

Debugging interface is a bit less ideally portable but if you support JLINK's libraries that are cross platform that'll handle a lot of cases.  Similar OpenOCD and a couple other ones.  And ethernet proxy based of course.  Basically not a problem if you do it right.

Is there any chance that the manufacturers could write their IDEs in Java so it could be portable from one hardware platform to another?

You would think they would want to, with the popularity of Chromebooks, etc, in the educational arena.

From the proprietary point of view, assuming the company absolutely does not want to fess up a single line of the code to the community, it is still possible to create a portable IDE or toolchain using cross platform open source projects:

* LLVM/clang is licensed under MIT license. A company can add code into this and release the resulting code under a proprietary license without source code. LLVM/clang have built-in assembler and linker so there is no need to find an alternative to those components.
* Eclipse allows proprietary plugins to be included without extending EPL to it, so a company can use Eclipse-based IDE for their chips.
* There are multiple libc implementations licensed under MIT, BSD or ISC licneses. The company can choose one and modify it as needed to build theirown C standard library.