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This setup offers some advantages to embedded developers using microcontrollers. The mbed IDE can be accessed through a web browser or downloaded to your Linux desktop (see instructions on this, below.) You can, however, set up your Linux machine to write control programs for an ARM-based microcontroller using the mbed platform. By contrast the ARM Cortex-M is a microcontroller level chip which might run at 16-100Mhz, contain 2-100kb of RAM, and some flash memory to contain only the program that you want to execute. (See my long series of reviews on of ARM-based computers that run Linux).
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MBED ONLINE COMPILER NUCLEO F401RE BUTTON FULL
The ARM CPU used in the BeagleBone Black and other single board computers is designed to interface with half to a few gigabytes of RAM and allow a full operating system such as Linux to be run on the computer. The mbed platform is an open source environment which allows you to write control programs in C/C++ and deploy them to many ARM Cortex-M based microcontroller boards. A microcontroller may not run any operating system at all, and simply start executing a single program soon after power is applied. You might want to use a microcontroller to turn a small servo motor, or connect some buttons and a screen to build a custom calculator, for example. A microcontroller contains a processor, some memory, and usually has some connections for interacting with external hardware.