Keil MDK Professional

Keil MDK Professional is the flagship commercial tier of Arm Keil MDK v6, the edition Indian Tier-1 automotive, railway-signalling, industrial-controls, medical-device, and defence-aerospace firmware teams purchase for safety-critical Cortex-M product work.

It includes everything in MDK Essential plus the FuSa Compiler, FuSa RTS, Fast Models / FVPs, and the armlm genLIC legacy-NL recipe. For programmes certifying to ISO 26262 ASIL-D, IEC 61508 SIL-3, EN 50716 SIL-4, or IEC 62304 Class-C, MDK Professional is the only MDK edition that gives you the qualified tooling you need.

GSAS Micro Systems is Arm’s authorized partner in India for Arm Development Tools. We quote MDK Professional in INR with the full procurement options Indian organisations need (GeM, SAP Ariba, Coupa, TReDS), and we provide hands-on FuSa migration consulting, debug-probe selection, and on-site application engineering across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi NCR, and Visakhapatnam.

What MDK Professional adds over Essential

1. Arm Compiler for Embedded FuSa

The TÜV-certified safety compiler. Currently in the AC6.22 LTS generation; AC6.16 LTS is reaching end-of-life and Indian teams certified against it should plan the migration. The FuSa branch covers:

• ISO 26262 ASIL D (Automotive)
• IEC 61508 SIL 3 (Industrial)
• EN 50716 SIL 4 (Railway, supersedes EN 50128)
• IEC 62304 Class C (Medical)

The qualification kit ships with the Safety Manual, Defect Report, Test Report, and Development Process Report, the evidence package a TÜV auditor or notified body expects to see in your safety case.

For the AC6.16 → AC6.22 LTS migration plan, see Planning the AC6.16 LTS → AC6.22 LTS Migration for Indian FuSa Programs.

2. Arm FuSa Run-Time System (FuSa RTS)

The qualified safety run-time. Includes:

• FuSa CMSIS-Core: qualified Cortex-M startup, exception handlers, and core-peripheral abstraction.
• FuSa RTX: qualified RTOS kernel with MPU-based spatial isolation and thread-watchdog support.
• FuSa C library: the qualified standard-library replacement satisfying safety-case requirements for libc.
• FuSa Event Recorder: qualified runtime telemetry for fault-injection testing and post-deployment safety analysis.

Supports the eight Cortex-M cores in the FuSa RTS support matrix (M0/M0+/M3/M4/M7/M23/M33/M55).

3. Arm Fixed Virtual Platforms (FVPs) and Fast Models

Software models of every Cortex-M core that run on a developer machine, enabling shift-left development (write firmware before silicon arrives) and CI without hardware (run the full test suite headlessly in GitHub Actions / GitLab / Jenkins). FVPs are available in MDK Professional only; Essential does not include them.

4. armlm genLIC: legacy-NL backwards compatibility

If your Indian engineering organisation also maintains older toolchains (AC5 / PK51 / DK251 / PK166 / MDK v5) for long-running automotive ECUs, industrial controllers, or sensor products from the 8051 / C166 / ARM7 era, MDK Professional’s UBL Pro entitlement covers them too. The armlm genLIC command generates legacy node-locked license files for the legacy compilers from your modern Pro-tier subscription, see Keeping Legacy AC5 / PK51 / DK251 / PK166 Projects Alive Under MDK v6 Pro UBL for the recipe.

5. Priority Arm support entitlement

MDK Professional support tickets are escalated faster through Arm engineering than the Essential tier, relevant for safety programmes where a tooling blocker can stall a regulator submission.

When MDK Professional is the right choice

Scenario	Recommendation
Automotive Tier-1 / Tier-2 ECU on ISO 26262 ASIL-D	Professional + FuSa
Railway signalling / interlocking on EN 50716 SIL-4	Professional + FuSa
Industrial controller on IEC 61508 SIL-3	Professional + FuSa
Medical device firmware on IEC 62304 Class-C	Professional + FuSa
Indian defence / aerospace firmware programmes	Professional (LLS deployment for air-gapped)
Teams maintaining AC5 / PK51 / DK251 / PK166 alongside Cortex-M	Professional (armlm genLIC)
Pre-silicon firmware development with Fast Models / FVPs	Professional
Mid-sized commercial Cortex-M team without certification	Essential
Students / hobbyists / open-source	Community (free)

Licensing

MDK Professional is licensed under User-Based Licensing (UBL): one subscription per developer identity. Per Arm’s UBL technical documentation (UBL HowManySeats.pdf, UBLDifferences.pdf), the operational UBL lease is 7 days off-network: the local cache refreshes daily when the machine is online. CI/CD entitlement is included; one CI bot identity = one seat regardless of parallel build count. Cloud License Server (CLS) is default; Local License Server (LLS) is available for air-gapped Indian defence, aerospace, and classified-network customers. See the Arm partner page UBL section for the deployment-model decision and armlm quick-reference.

For the FlexLM → UBL migration story, see FlexNet Node-Locked Is Ending, How Indian Arm Keil MDK Teams Should Migrate to UBL in 2026.

Compare MDK editions

Feature	Community	Essential	Professional
Cost	Free	Commercial	Commercial (highest tier)
Use case	Non-commercial only	Commercial product dev	Commercial + safety-critical
Arm support entitlement	None	✅	✅ priority
MDK-Middleware	✅ free	✅ free	✅ free
FuSa Compiler (TÜV-certified)	❌	❌	✅
FuSa RTS	❌	❌	✅
Fast Models / FVPs	❌	❌	✅
armlm genLIC legacy NL	❌	❌	✅
LLS for air-gapped	❌	✅	✅
Sold in India by GSAS	n/a	✅	✅

Why Indian Tier-1 / Tier-2 teams buy MDK Professional from GSAS

• INR procurement: GeM, SAP Ariba, Coupa, TReDS supported. GST-compliant invoicing through the GSAS India entity.
• FuSa migration consulting: AC6.16 → AC6.22 LTS qualification re-verification planning, Safety Manual delta documentation, TÜV-audit coordination.
• LLS deployment for air-gapped programmes: on-site session with the customer’s IT-security team, network policy review, hand-off to the customer’s licensing administrator.
• Legacy maintenance support: armlm genLIC runbook, host-ID extraction guidance, legacy build-VM operations runbook.
• CI/CD setup: csolution.yml + GitHub Actions / GitLab CI integration, parallel build matrix sizing, UBL CI seat configuration.
• Authorized Arm engineering partner since 2018: a long-standing Arm tools partner across India. We have migrated hundreds of Indian engineering teams across compiler generations and licensing models.

Get an MDK Professional + FuSa quote for your team →