I love 8-bit AVR but need more power!

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mhatter
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Posted by mhatter: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 12:27 AM
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I've been really happy working with the 8-bit AVR line of uCs, but now I need something with more horsepower.

I'd love to find a platform with the following qualities:

    * C/C++ compiler (Free would be great!) * Enough horsepower to read/buffer a 150kB TCP/IP stream with a lot of cycles left.
    * 16/32 bit floating point performer
    * Two+ UART (more is better)
    * One+ SPI (more is better)
    * 2-Layer PCB friendly packages
    * USB
    * Existing Libs/Drivers for peripherals, Ethernet, etc. (something without the need for an OS would be ideal)
    * Many speed grades/pin counts.
What platform(s) do you look to when you need more oomph than an 8-bit AVR can provide?

I have too many hobbies.
s-conductor.com

Tags:

AVR Microcontrollers, megaAVR and tinyAVR
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timgoh0
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Posted by timgoh0: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 01:47 AM
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I'm thinking the Luminary (now TI) Stellaris range found http://www.luminarymicro.com/

Driverlib is your library. lwip handles the higher IP/TCP stack. USB is handled by another library. Toolchain is based off GCC, so you COULD roll your own, or use the codered one. Documentation is quite complete, but PLEASE read the errata sheet carefully.

Also, I think this thread should be in some other board.

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mhatter
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Posted by mhatter: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 02:38 AM
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timgoh0 wrote:
I'm thinking the Luminary (now TI) Stellaris range found http://www.luminarymicro.com/

Driverlib is your library. lwip handles the higher IP/TCP stack. USB is handled by another library. Toolchain is based off GCC, so you COULD roll your own, or use the codered one. Documentation is quite complete, but PLEASE read the errata sheet carefully.

Also, I think this thread should be in some other board.

Thanks for the info. I'll start reading right now.

Do you have a recommendation for a more general uC message board? I thought about posting this in general electronics on this board, but figured this forum made the most sense.

I have too many hobbies.
s-conductor.com

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kk6gm
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Posted by kk6gm: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 03:02 AM
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If you go ARM/Cortex (which I would second as an excellent choice), try the sparkfun.com ARM forum. arm.com also has a forum.

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stevech
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Posted by stevech: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 04:12 AM
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http://www.embeddedrelated.com/g...

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 08:47 AM
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Start by getting an LPCXpresso to learn the basics of ARM - the entire "package" includes using the Eclipse IDE as a front end to arm-gcc (a tailored version from "Code Red"). When you have the basics then pick from thousands and thousands of ARM alternatives.

EDIT: fixed typo.

Last Edited: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 02:54 PM
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Kartman
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Posted by Kartman: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 12:30 PM
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Cliff, you beat Leon to it this time......

(suggesting alternate brand microcontrollers that is)

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 12:37 PM
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XMOS is another option:

http://www.xmos.com

For prototyping, the XC-2 board does Ethernet out of the box, and the other stuff can easily be added to it. If the application fits on the two-core device, a double-sided board would be feasible.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 01:52 PM
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Quote:

XMOS is another option:

Yeah there are so many suppliers of XMOS out there and so many different models to chose from between $1 and $100 that it's the obvious choice really.

Oh no, wait a minute, that's ARM isn't it? ;-)

Quote:

Cliff, you beat Leon to it this time......

(suggesting alternate brand microcontrollers that is)


I think it was the OP who started it? ;-)

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TrainzStoffe
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Posted by TrainzStoffe: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 02:42 PM
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And when the errata sheet from Luminary scares you (there's a nasty couple of errors) or their delivery dates get you tired (they still haven't released the µC I used that was due over a year ago), you look at other sources. NXP and ST are the two prime candidates in my mind at the moment. The Luminary ones are great in theory, and the integrated Ethernet controller is awesome... in theory. I've been burned. Have a good look at the errata sheets.
Regarding performance: 150 kBit/s data should be a cakewalk. I used UDP and could serve up data at close to the theoretical limit of the 100 Mb/s Ethernet connection. Using TCP will limit it rather harshly though, since the internal RAM you have to use to buffer packets runs out in microseconds. But 1 Mb/s should be perfectly doable. Just pick the µC that has the most RAM you can find. You'll want it, trust me.

But I agree with clawson - for your first venture, the LPCXpresso is awesome.

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gchapman
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Posted by gchapman: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 06:05 PM
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TI OMAP35x but no Ethernet (can use usbnet and usb-eth software as an equivalent, or, added hardware). BeagleBoard uses a OMAP35x; BeagleBoard-XM adds Ethernet.
You'll need a watt or two to use these options.
Other options with reduced capability are Freescale i.MX233 and i.MX512, Atmel UC3A0 or UC3A3, multiple Atmel ARMs:
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/param_table.asp?family_id=605&OrderBy=1454&Direction=DESC#

Quote:
* 2-Layer PCB friendly packages
TI's 0.65mm pitch BGA for OMAP35x can be on a 4 layer PCB.
http://focus.ti.com/lit/an/spraav6b/spraav6b.pdf
EDIT: Ethernet addition.

"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller

Last Edited: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 08:09 PM
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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 06:50 PM
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OMAP is one of the most complex ARMs I've used - why would one start the ARM journey on something so complex? Wasn't the datasheet somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 pages long? It'd be like learning to drive in a Bugatti Veyron.

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gchapman
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Posted by gchapman: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 08:16 PM
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clawson wrote:
OMAP is one of the most complex ARMs I've used - why would one start the ARM journey on something so complex?
It's the only one I'm aware of that meets almost all of mhatter's requirements with (hardware) floating point being the long pole. If the requirements can be reduced (32 or 64-bit fixed point instead of floating point) then easier MCUs can be used. In the near future are Cortex-M4 and UC3C that have hardware floating point.

"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller

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mhatter
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Posted by mhatter: Wed. Sep 1, 2010 - 11:35 PM
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gchapman wrote:
It's the only one I'm aware of that meets almost all of mhatter's requirements with (hardware) floating point being the long pole. If the requirements can be reduced (32 or 64-bit fixed point instead of floating point) then easier MCUs can be used. In the near future are Cortex-M4 and UC3C that have hardware floating point.
While a hardware FPU would be awesome it's not a requirement. The single instruction 32Bit multiply on the Cortex-M3 is more what I really meant. See: 8bit multiply vs Cortex-M3

I wish I would have read about ARM (specifically Cortex-M3) a long time ago. I have applications that use Mega128's where a cheaper (and faster) ARM would have been a much better choice.

I've ordered a LPCXpresso-1768 (god I hate that name) to start experimenting with. Thanks for the recommendations!

It seems like the big question with ARM is really in which tools you prefer using. IAR, CrossWorks, CodeRed, etc. With my taste I'll probably end up preferring IAR. :roll:

I have too many hobbies.
s-conductor.com

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stevech
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Posted by stevech: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 04:31 AM
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Yeah, these 8 bitters with more than 65536 bytes of flash are a mess. Paging memory, 64KB at a time.

Kind of like how the PIC micros page 256 bytes at a time. Or used to. Not sure, I de-PICed years ago.

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Bosstopher
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Posted by Bosstopher: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 04:43 AM
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A peer of mine likes Netburner (http://www.netburner.com).

Not sure about the FPU, but the other requirements look good. I believe the IDE is free (Eclipse based), and has free tools to download to reprogram over TCP/IP.

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TrainzStoffe
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Posted by TrainzStoffe: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 08:06 AM
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I'm using IAR at the moment, and it's not the greatest, editor-wise. It's probably possible to move the editing part out easily... actually, why wouldn't it be possible to just do the editing in Eclipse, which I'm used to? Still, I'd need to swap back and forth for debugging and downloading, and it feels like I'd be maintaining two workspaces.
Another downside with IAR is that if you're developing commercially, the license cost is... lets say 'prohibitive' for small scale products.
I had a chat with a regional manager from IAR, who said that an eclipse-based version was in the works. Might have to inquire about that again...

I used Code Red earlier, it's Eclipse-based, and rather nice. It has its oddities, but so do all of them, I suppose. However, I got into a huge spat with them about licensing though. I bought a dev kit that was supposed to be licensed unlimited, but locked to the board. Somwhere between ordering and receiving the dev kit that license was quietly changed to 3 months. Big problem for a 6-month Master's Thesis. They weren't very customer-friendly then, blaming the dev kit manufacturers, who were blaiming Code Red, and trying to put us in between.

I'd like to try Keil next time I get a choice, maybe it's better.

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 10:34 AM
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Quote:

I used Code Red earlier, it's Eclipse-based, and rather nice.

Second that - it's very easy to use and it's great that NXP chose to pair with Code Red for the Xpresso's - hopefully you won't have the kind of support nightmare that TrainzStoffe had. For simple support the Xpresso forum is very good: http://knowledgebase.nxp.com/lpc...

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 01:59 PM
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I've just started getting problems with the Code Red software (3.4.6), nothing builds any more. I'm downloading the latest version, hopefully that will work. I've just got one of the LPC1343 boards, and want to try it.

I much prefer Rowley CrossWorks - they wanted to bid for the LPCXpresso project but NXP weren't interested.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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kk6gm
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Posted by kk6gm: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 02:09 PM
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leon_heller wrote:

I much prefer Rowley CrossWorks - they wanted to bid for the LPCXpresso project but NXP weren't interested.

I'm also a fan of CrossWorks. The included tasking library is a very nice bonus too.

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 02:56 PM
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I posted my problem to the LPCXpresso forum, and got a very quick reply from Code Red. I downloaded a new version of msys.dll from their web site which solved the problem.

The CrossWorks Tasking Library is nice; I often just use it for interrupt handling, without the RTOS stuff. The IDE is what I really like, though. Atmel should have bought it for the new version of Studio.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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mhatter
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Posted by mhatter: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 06:25 PM
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leon_heller wrote:
I posted my problem to the LPCXpresso forum, and got a very quick reply from Code Red. I downloaded a new version of msys.dll from their web site which solved the problem.

The CrossWorks Tasking Library is nice; I often just use it for interrupt handling, without the RTOS stuff. The IDE is what I really like, though. Atmel should have bought it for the new version of Studio.

It's good to hear Code Red support is on top of issues. After becoming a little more comfortable with ARM, I'll explore CrossWorks and IAR.

Is the J-Link the de facto programmer/emulator?

I have too many hobbies.
s-conductor.com

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Bingo600
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Posted by Bingo600: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 06:50 PM
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leon_heller wrote:
I posted my problem to the LPCXpresso forum, and got a very quick reply from Code Red. I downloaded a new version of msys.dll from their web site which solved the problem.

@Leon

Is that dll needed for the new version of CodeRed ?

I still have the "Previous vers" installed on an XP SP3 machine. But haven't used it the last month or so.

I'll give the codesourcery lite a go , when i hit the 128K limit in the CodeRed suite. I have Xpresso 1768's.

Btw: Does anyone know if the compiler won't generate more than 128K code , or the Jtag/Debugger/Programmer just refuses to Program / Debug or both ?

Meaning if you can generate more than 128K Code , but then have to program/Debug via Jlink or Bootloader

/Bingo

Last Edited: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 06:55 PM
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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 06:52 PM
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I asked Code Red that. They haven't used that dll with the new version, so anyone having a similar problem with that has to download the fixed dll. It's a very rare problem, apparently, and can affect anyone using software based on Cygwin. The new version 3.50 worked OK for me.

Rowley have their own JTAGs (I use their CrossConnect Pro), but they also support the Segger J-Link. It has a good reputation, but is quite expensive.

Leon Heller G1HSM

Last Edited: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 06:58 PM
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Bingo600
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Posted by Bingo600: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 06:57 PM
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leon_heller wrote:
Rowley have their own JTAGs (I use their CrossConnect Pro), but they also support the Segger J-Link. It has a good reputation, but is quite expensive.

For non commercial a J-Link can be obtained for low money .. Think around 60€

/Bingo

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 07:21 PM
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Quote:

They haven't used that dll with the new version, so anyone having a similar problem with that has to download the fixed dll. It's a very rare problem,

There's a problem in GCC running on some Winx64 platforms which involves a replacement MSYS too - so possibly not THAT rare.

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curtvm
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Posted by curtvm: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 07:23 PM
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Another option-
http://www.coocox.net/CooCox_CoI...

It looks like Eclipse for beginners, and has some nice repository code (like sd card, lcd). I don't know if its any good, but its the first thing I'm trying if I go >128k nxp. They (and everyone else in China) have a cheap debugger, also.

(I also just noticed Nuvoton is making a variety of M0's)

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Bingo600
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Posted by Bingo600: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 08:06 PM
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I checked CooCox a bit , and i think the licensing was strange

/Bingo

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Kartman
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Posted by Kartman: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 11:38 PM
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There's always the Codesourcery gcc build that has no code limit. Whilst they are nice, the CodeRed tools tie you into their libraries so if you want to escape to 'normal' gcc, then you might have a few issues. My first experience with LPCExpresso was very positive - the CodeRed tools are well set up and the demo code very useful. I ported some AVR code across to use the USB CDC interface and it was all quite painless. Whereas if you go 'off the beaten track' and make your own environment using Eclipse, openocd,gcc etc then you're in for a bumpy ride. The $256USD price for 256k CodeRed is a good investment!

Xmos - Leon got me into them! Worth a look from interests sake. Definitely a different way of doing things. Single source, yes, but what is the AVR?

Has there been any mention of the PIC32? Time will tell how it fares for our Microchip friends. Anyone had some experience?

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Thu. Sep 2, 2010 - 11:52 PM
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The PIC32 is a nice chip and MIPS has some advantages over the ARM. Microchip's tools are excellent and I like being able to use MPLAB and the ICD 3 for every device they make, including the PIC32. The peripherals are very good (identical to those on the 16-bit PICs) and it's pin-compatible with the latter devices with the same number of pins, making upgrading very easy. Extensive (free) software libraries are provided for most applications. I'm designing a board for a client with two PIC32 chips on it.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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stevech
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Posted by stevech: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 03:01 AM
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Did the Chevy Corvair use a MIPS for the ECU?

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 03:31 AM
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You obviously know nothing about it! Why don't you try it for yourself, or at least read a data sheet?

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Kartman
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Posted by Kartman: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 03:35 AM
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Quote:
Did the Chevy Corvair use a MIPS for the ECU?

What?? Is it unsafe at any speed?

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 03:58 AM
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clawson wrote:
Quote:

XMOS is another option:

Yeah there are so many suppliers of XMOS out there and so many different models to chose from between $1 and $100 that it's the obvious choice really.

Oh no, wait a minute, that's ARM isn't it? ;-)

Quote:

Cliff, you beat Leon to it this time......

(suggesting alternate brand microcontrollers that is)


I think it was the OP who started it? ;-)

You don't seem to understand the XMOS architecture. They are very high performance general-purpose devices, with peripherals implemented in software rather than hardware. The AVR is single-source, as is the AVR32, and many other more popular devices, such as PICs.

ARM chips from different manufacturers aren't compatible with each other, BTW. The peripherals will be different and they won't be pin-compatible, necessitating a board design and considerable software changes.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 09:30 AM
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Quote:

ARM chips from different manufacturers aren't compatible with each other, BTW

Thanks Leon, I wasn't born yesterday, I know this. But it is FAR easier to port ARM to ARM than XMOS to "whatever the hell claims to be compatible with them, oh wait a minute, there isn't anything so you are f**ked if supply dries up"

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wek
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Posted by wek: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 09:46 AM
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mhatter wrote:
What platform(s) do you look to when you need more oomph than an 8-bit AVR can provide?
x86 (as in PC).
mhatter wrote:

* Many speed grades/pin counts.
I am sure you would be satisfied by the pin counts... :-P

JW

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wek
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Posted by wek: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 09:47 AM
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clawson wrote:
Quote:

ARM chips from different manufacturers aren't compatible with each other, BTW

Thanks Leon, I wasn't born yesterday, I know this. But it is FAR easier to port ARM to ARM than XMOS to "whatever the hell claims to be compatible with them, oh wait a minute, there isn't anything so you are f**ked if supply dries up"
Humm. And I thought, Cliff, that you DO prefer AVRs to '51s.

Jan

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 09:54 AM
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Lots of AVR users seem to have been f**ked by Atmel's inability to get their chips made. :) XMOS devices are easy to obtain in any quantity. At least one company is buying unmarked chips and supplying them as ASICs, with their own marking on them.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 10:08 AM
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Leon,

The key questions are do they have their own fabs and do they have more than one of them?

Anyone remember the crisis in the DRAM market that was caused when a typhoon hit the Far East and wiped out the main fabs (flooding) temporarily? That one cost our company millions of dollars as I think we had no choice but to use Micron as a source in USA - naturally they were far, far more expensive than Eastern suppliers. At least a second (or rather third/fourth/fifth) source was actually available in that case as DRAM is generic.

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Posted by leon_heller: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 10:44 AM
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They use TSMC, like most other people (90 nm and 45 nm). TSMC is building Fab15, an enormous new facility which will process over 100,000 12" wafers a month. XMOS will probably move to 28 nm quite soon.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Posted by Kartman: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 11:27 AM
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Just about any which way you turn, to change devices means work. The days of the multisourced micros like the 8051/52 are long gone. Even with fpgas, going from Xilinx to Altera causes pain and where do they get their stuff fabbed? It keeps us engineers employed as outside forces mean things need to be changed/updated etc due to chips becoming obsolete or unavailable.
I'm pondering the course of action with a mega2560 project that has been resurrected - do I stick with the AVR or jump over to an ARM or similar architecture device? I don't need the performance and the requirement is 4 uarts. I need to do a board spin and the code would be easy to port across. Chip cost really isn't an issue. Luminary/TI probably won't get a look in since most of their devices don't have uarts that support RS485 without using timers etc for a workaround. NXP is compelling due to the free tools (CodeRed) as I'm not going to get anywhere near the 128k limit. XMOS would be overkill. ST and Microchip might be worth a look.

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 11:37 AM
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Altera and Xilinx both use TSMC.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Posted by wek: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 12:00 PM
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leon_heller wrote:
Altera and Xilinx both use TSMC.
Leon,

I would really like to know, what makes you to make broad claims like this - which by the way is false.

I don't know about Altera, but Xilinx manufactures at UMC and Toshiba.

Jan Waclawek

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 12:14 PM
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I read it somewhere, recently. I think it only applies to their latest 28 mm devices, on reflection. I've just found it:

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4087890/Xilinx-confirms-Samsung-TSMC-in-UMC-out-at-28-nm

It says that Altera has used TSMC for years.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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wek
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Posted by wek: Fri. Sep 3, 2010 - 01:17 PM
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leon_heller wrote:
I read it somewhere, recently. I think it only applies to their latest 28 mm devices, on reflection. I've just found it:

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4087890/Xilinx-confirms-Samsung-TSMC-in-UMC-out-at-28-nm

Ah, so. I stand corrected and apologize.

Still, if FPGA type A is manufactured in fab X and FPGA type B in fab Y, it is still single-sourced. You can't know beforehand which of the products will suffer some sort of cutback for watever reason. Moving between FPGA families of the same manufacturer is not trivial, either.

JW

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Posted by stevech: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 02:56 AM
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leon_heller wrote:
You obviously know nothing about it! Why don't you try it for yourself, or at least read a data sheet?
When MIPS was avante-gard in the late '80's/early 90's, I did some amazing things with early DEC Workstations using MIPS. Then came DEC's Alpha chip/workstation which trumped the dickens out of MIPS.

With ARM so multi-sourced and pervasive, in my opinion, it's risky or foolish to design-in PIC32 *or* AVR32 for something to be produced in volume for years. That notion isn't a data sheet.

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Posted by stevech: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 03:08 AM
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Quote:

I much prefer Rowley CrossWorks - they wanted to bid for the LPCXpresso project but NXP weren't interested.

Perhaps because the compiler is GCC.

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 05:54 AM
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Code Red uses gcc as well, and Eclipse. It has had lots of problems, whereas CrossWorks has always been very reliable.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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stevech
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Posted by stevech: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 04:35 PM
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leon_heller wrote:
Code Red uses gcc as well, and Eclipse. It has had lots of problems, whereas CrossWorks has always been very reliable.
Crossworks has an elegant IDE, very capable. But the underlying compiler is GCC. That's not a bad thing, of course, but curious, in that GCC is public domain and mixed in with a for-profit product. There are 3 or so products that do so.

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 04:58 PM
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There's nothing wrong with that, it's permitted by the gcc license.

They considered writing their own compiler, as they have done for the MSP430, AVR and MAXQ, but decided that it wasn't necessary. They did write their own libraries, though. They are more efficient than the standard ones.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Posted by ArnoldB: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 05:38 PM
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stevech wrote:
That's not a bad thing, of course, but curious, in that GCC is public domain
It is not public domain.

Stealing Proteus doesn't make you an engineer.

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 06:24 PM
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Does GPL mean I can ask Rowley for their entire source code and rebuild my own IDE for no cost? Or are they wheedling out of their GPL responsibility by saying that the compiler is completely separate from the IDE?

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 06:34 PM
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gcc and binutils source code is available:

http://www.rowley.co.uk/arm/index.htm

They don't make the source code for their libraries available, of course.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 06:51 PM
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I guess this (as always) comes back to the definition of "derivative work". The FSF and their lawyers are still setting the boundaries by legal precedent on this one.

The problem with GCC as with Linux is that there are probably too many copyright holders (they must all agree to take action) which is why the Linux GPL transgressions that have gone to court are actually about Busybox and not the Linux kernel itself.

I think Joerg said that the GCC developers are now insisting that all patches and added functionality must have it's copyright signed over to FSF now - presumably they're trying to reconcile it so that there's only one copyright holder who can then go after GPL infringements. I'll bet they'd class a commercial GCC based IDE as a "derivative work". Interesting times ahead methinks.

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Posted by leon_heller: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 07:12 PM
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The gcc version supplied by Rowley can be run as a command line application, of course, it doesn't need the IDE. The IDE is written in Visual C++ and QT, and is identical to that supplied with their other compilers.

Leon Heller G1HSM

Last Edited: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 07:19 PM
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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 07:18 PM
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No but the IDE requires the GPL code to be in place to be of any use. Some might argue (and I bet the FSF will) that this makes the software that depends on the presence of GCC to be a derivative work. But like I say we're all "safe" so far as no courts seem able to agree what this loose term "derivative work" means. AFAIK this is why th wording of GPL3 was made much more stringent than GPL2 to avoid the ambiguity but I think that at present Linux and GCC are licenced under GPL2 but if FSF can get complete (c) ownership of GCC I'm willing to bet they'll modify the licence to GPL3

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Sat. Sep 4, 2010 - 07:21 PM
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I'm quite sure that companies like Rowley have taken legal advice on such matters, and are satisfied that they don't have to make their IDE source code available. I can't see how it could be described as a derivative work, especially as they use it with their own compilers, and versions of it have been around for years, before they even got involved with the ARM.

If there was a problem, they'd simply write their own compiler. They are rather good at writing compilers and it wouldn't take them very long.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Posted by jayjay1974: Sun. Sep 5, 2010 - 10:37 AM
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Quote:
With ARM so multi-sourced and pervasive, in my opinion, it's risky or foolish to design-in PIC32 *or* AVR32 for something to be produced in volume for years. That notion isn't a data sheet.

But ARM is just the processor core. The peripherals might be wildly incompatible.

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Posted by stevech: Mon. Sep 6, 2010 - 05:45 AM
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jayjay1974 wrote:
Quote:
With ARM so multi-sourced and pervasive, in my opinion, it's risky or foolish to design-in PIC32 *or* AVR32 for something to be produced in volume for years. That notion isn't a data sheet.

But ARM is just the processor core. The peripherals might be wildly incompatible.

my point was that if the PIC32 or AVR32 CPU itself is unpopular or marginalized, the ARM core based products are far less risky

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Posted by sparrow2: Mon. Sep 6, 2010 - 07:35 AM
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Quote:
The peripherals might be wildly incompatible
But with the cortex the basic peripherals is a part of the design.

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Posted by anders_m: Mon. Sep 6, 2010 - 09:13 AM
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clawson wrote:
No but the IDE requires the GPL code to be in place to be of any use. Some might argue (and I bet the FSF will) that this makes the software that depends on the presence of GCC to be a derivative work.
The FSF's position is that if two programs run in separate processes and use something like files or pipes to communicate, they don't form an aggregate work and are not covered by the GPL. If the IDE used GCC as a library it would be a different matter.

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Mon. Sep 6, 2010 - 10:16 AM
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That seems sensible.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Posted by chanseng738: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 04:02 PM
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The LPC1768 LPCXpresso board seems very promising. One question is can I use this board for realtime image processing development. Can I compile OpenCV with this board? Is this board fast enough to process live image?

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 04:18 PM
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It depends on the size of the image and the type of interface to the camera.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 04:40 PM
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And the frame rate.

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Posted by chanseng738: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 05:05 PM
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320x200, frame rate 30 fps, is that ok?

I also found MBED, looks like a cool and very fast rapid prototyping tool, anyone use mbed before?

Looks like very fast and lots of RAM and peripherals and damn easy to do the programming! I never thought ARM can be programmed so easily......Can this mbed do image processing?

"This mbed Microcontroller is based on a Cortex-M3 Core running at 96MHz, with 512KB FLASH, 64KB RAM and a load of interfaces including Ethernet, USB Device, CAN, SPI, I2C and other I/O."

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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Posted by chanseng738: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 05:08 PM
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The bad thing is we can't use it for commercial purpose, it is too expensive for commercial....Damn, if this thing can do image processing and low cost enough for commercialization, it will become a hit and maybe become Arduino killer too.

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 05:18 PM
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At Farnell the 1768 mbed is £42.19:

http://search.digikey.com/script...

While the 1768 Xpresso is £21.41:

http://search.digikey.com/script...

You could have two Xpresso's for the cost of one Mbed - why would you choose the latter?

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 05:27 PM
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I've got two LPCXpressos (1144 and 1343) and one mbed (1768). NXP gave me the latter in return for running the LPC2000 group. :) It's a nicer board in some ways, and software development is easier for beginners; it's somewhat like the Arduino in that it hides all the messy stuff.

Here is another new ARM board that was developed by Rowley Associates and Hot Solder:

http://www.soldercore.com/

It'll sell for about £60 (hardware only).

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Posted by clawson: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 05:51 PM
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But what sells Arduinos and Xpressos is/was the sub-£20/$30 price tag which makes them an "impulse buy" for many. When you get up to £40 or £60 you have to think long and hard as to "do I really need this just to 'play'?". I can well see Xpresso's taking Arduino market especially if the Code Red Eclipse was replaced by something far less daunting for beginners and a decent amount of pre-written (and WORKING!) library code were provided for cross-platform use. I doubt that beginners who just want to dip a toe in the water would be willing to splash out £60 on the Rowley offering however good it might turn out to be once they actually got it - Rowley's problem is that they just aren't going to take the chance.

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Tue. Sep 7, 2010 - 06:03 PM
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I think that the fact that it can run BASIC might help, plus Ethernet and SD-Card. Adding those to an Arduino or LPCXpresso pushes the price up a lot.

I just got one of these little boards for the mbed:

http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=528

It was good value at £12.99. The soldering and board cleanliness leave something to be desired, though.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Posted by chanseng738: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 02:49 AM
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clawson wrote:
At Farnell the 1768 mbed is £42.19:

http://search.digikey.com/script...

While the 1768 Xpresso is £21.41:

http://search.digikey.com/script...

You could have two Xpresso's for the cost of one Mbed - why would you choose the latter?

Because I can develop an internet application in 5 min with mbed!

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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Posted by Kartman: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 04:50 AM
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changseng , if you want some processing grunt for video, look at the BeagleBoard or Hawkboard.

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Posted by chanseng738: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 05:25 AM
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Hey Kartman, thanks, will take a look on the board....

btw, anyone know why AVR8 cant run at a speed higher than 20 MHz? Why Atmel set the upper limit to 20MHz only? Why cant Atmel release an AVR8 run at 100 Mhz or even 1 GHz, then I will not bother to look for ARM and whatnot...

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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Posted by chanseng738: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 05:41 AM
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Kartman wrote:
changseng , if you want some processing grunt for video, look at the BeagleBoard or Hawkboard.

The BeagleBoard is very nice with lots of feature including DSP but so expensive, I can buy a netbook instead! Why bother to buy this board?

The Hawkboard is cheaper but still almost as close the price to a cheap china made android tablet pc...

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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Posted by gchapman: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 06:32 AM
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chanseng738 wrote:
The BeagleBoard is very nice with lots of feature including DSP but so expensive, I can buy a netbook instead! Why bother to buy this board
Power consumption - BeagleBoard plus a display is a few watts versus 16W for my netbook.
BeagleBoard can be a development tool to proof-of-concept a possible Cortex-A8 embedded design. Though one site benched an Atom versus Cortex-A8 and Atom was on top a lot especially w.r.t. floating point.
Size with cost - BeagleBoard is smaller and less expensive than pico-ITX boards.

"Dare to be naïve." - Buckminster Fuller

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wek
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Posted by wek: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 07:03 AM
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chanseng738 wrote:
btw, anyone know why AVR8 cant run at a speed higher than 20 MHz? Why Atmel set the upper limit to 20MHz only? Why cant Atmel release an AVR8 run at 100 Mhz or even 1 GHz, then I will not bother to look for ARM and whatnot...
Mainly because of FLASH fetch speed; and for the cost.

JW

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 08:57 AM
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It is feasible, of course. Microchip has many of their 16-bit devices running at 40 MHz, and is working on 60 MHz operation. They are competitively priced.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Posted by chanseng738: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 10:17 AM
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leon_heller wrote:
It is feasible, of course. Microchip has many of their 16-bit devices running at 40 MHz, and is working on 60 MHz operation. They are competitively priced.

Then why on earth Atmel dont want to release a 60 Mhz version of say Atmega1284P as the high end AVR8? 60 MHz can give 3 times the current max speed of AVR8. It also means many more advanced and high speed applications can be developed with AVR8. Bigger market share for Atmel, more revenue, I cant understand why Atmel dont want to do that?

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 10:26 AM
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There isn't a market for high-performance 8-bit devices! Scenix/Ubicom tried it, with their 75 MHz and 100 MHz chips, but they weren't very successful. Parallax sold quite a few, mainly to hobbyists, but Ubicom has now stopped making them. A 16-bit AVR might make sense.

Leon Heller G1HSM

Last Edited: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 10:30 AM
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chanseng738
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Posted by chanseng738: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 10:26 AM
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Comparing LPC Expresso 1768 with Atmega 1284P, what is the advantage of LPC expresso 1768? It terms of speed, 1768Epresso run at 12.5 Mhz, Atmega 1284P 20MHz, no obvious advantage. The only advantage is perhaps the built in ethernet and usb in expresso 1768, but Atmega can also add the usb and ethernet support with a few cheap components...

Software development: Code Red said clearly max download is only 128 K, while WinAVR no limit (although Atmega1284P can support only 128K, thus no difference).

Support: LPC Xpresso support can never compare with AVR support because LPC dont have LPC freak forum!

So, my question is what is the real advantage of using LPC Expresso besides usb, ethernet and more RAM?

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 10:27 AM
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If we are talking cheap "grunt" then $60 buys you an Intel D410PT which is a motherboard fitted with a second generation Atom processor running at 1.6GHz. Just add a $10-$15 DIMM (512MB is fine for Linux) and a USB memory stick holding Linux and you have a VERY powerful computer indeed. It's well able to do realtime video processing at D1 resolution or even MP@HL.

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stevech
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Posted by stevech: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 07:10 PM
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chanseng738 wrote:
Comparing LPC Expresso 1768 with Atmega 1284P,
This comparison is about as apples-to-oranges as it gets. Let's compare a BMW 7 series to a Smart Car. Each has its merits.

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 07:37 PM
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Quote:

1768Epresso run at 12.5 Mhz

I think you'll find it is 72MHz in fact (the Xpresso 1114 and 1343 are anyway)

Maybe you were confused by the fact that it has a 12MHz (not 12.5MHz) crystal attached? But the PLL whizzes this up to 72.

Embedded Artists (designers of the Xpresso boards) have a page about 1768 here:

http://www.embeddedartists.com/p...

NXP's page about Xpresso is here:

http://ics.nxp.com/lpcxpresso/

The 1768 can be clocked up to 100MHz but 72MHz is chosen as it is USB friendly (a multiple of 12MHz)

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wek
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Posted by wek: Wed. Sep 8, 2010 - 09:08 PM
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chanseng738 wrote:
leon_heller wrote:
It is feasible, of course. Microchip has many of their 16-bit devices running at 40 MHz, and is working on 60 MHz operation. They are competitively priced.
Then why on earth Atmel dont want to release a 60 Mhz version of say Atmega1284P as the high end AVR8?
Because Atmel is not Microchip. As I said, the main reason is FLASH speed and cost. 25ns embedded FLASH is yesteryear's cutting edge. Atmel does not have a high-speed FLASH technology at hand at the moment, and to get one it costs a substantial investment (either to buy licence or to pay R&D) which would have to be justified by prospects of future sales. And as Leon said, there is not that much demand for high-speed 8-bitters (as a sidenote, there is little market for high-end 16-bitters either - the Intel 251 and 196 are dead, so is Siemens 166, so is Philips MX; and if you want to look at the newer ones, after much ado I havent heard that Cyan eCog would do that much well, for example. Leon might say that the PIC24s/dsPICs sell like hot potatoes, but that's just another BS, it may be a fair business but surely no gold mine. Today 16-bitters (like the TI '430) position themselves as the next generation 8-bitter replacements, which means less revenue than in the high-end, which is cut down drastically by the ARM war anyway).

Oh yes, and Atmel *did* make a step upwards in speed with the XMegas, although maybe the raw speed did not increase THAT much. Have you considered using those, perhaps?

JW

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Kartman
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Posted by Kartman: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 01:35 AM
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The main advantage the AVR has is eeprom. In many apps this is an advantage andone of the reasons I moved to the AVR many years ago. The lpcs allow you to write to flash, but not quite as convenient as you write a sector so you would have to keep a ram copy, modify the copy then write to flash. I use a task to do this to implement a timeout to minimize the number of erase/write cycles.

The free CodeRed tools are limited to 128k but that doesn't stop you from using the CodeSourcery free Gcc build that is not limited.

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chanseng738
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Posted by chanseng738: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 01:43 AM
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clawson wrote:
If we are talking cheap "grunt" then $60 buys you an Intel D410PT which is a motherboard fitted with a second generation Atom processor running at 1.6GHz. Just add a $10-$15 DIMM (512MB is fine for Linux) and a USB memory stick holding Linux and you have a VERY powerful computer indeed. It's well able to do realtime video processing at D1 resolution or even MP@HL.

Actually the "grunt" is from my customer. He wants a cheap embedded solution (for vision application). When I told him the cost, he always thought embedded system is very cheap, much cheaper than netbook (since it has no LCD screen, no harddisk, and ...).

It is so hard to beat the China made products nowadays, even in high-tech stuff like vision system, their system is cheap... Hard to survive nowadays....

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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chanseng738
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Posted by chanseng738: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 01:52 AM
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wek wrote:
chanseng738 wrote:
leon_heller wrote:

Oh yes, and Atmel *did* make a step upwards in speed with the XMegas, although maybe the raw speed did not increase THAT much. Have you considered using those, perhaps?

JW

No, I never consider to use Xmegas, the small increase in speed (2x? 4x?) and some other "goodies" does that justify the additional time and efforts to learn Xmegas... AVR8 can do almost everything that can be done by Xmegas but at a much simpler coding effort and much more support and documentation. More important, Xmega dont have DIP! If I have to use Surface mount, I better switch to a cheaper and powerful uC like ARM, since ARM power is many times than the AVR8 as compared to AVR32. (I hardly heard any commercial products using Xmega, but ARM so commonly used...)

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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wek
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Posted by wek: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 04:54 AM
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You seem to confuse the 8-bit XMega family with the 32-bit AVR32 family.

The former has an identical instruction set to the "classical" AVRs, and ticks up to 32MHz.

But if your raw computing power has to be *order(s) of magnitude* more than that (as you said, 4x does not justify the "coding effort"), then it's just logical to go for either a high-end-ARM-based board, or a PC.

JW

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chanseng738
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Posted by chanseng738: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 05:10 AM
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wek wrote:
You seem to confuse the 8-bit XMega family with the 32-bit AVR32 family.

The former has an identical instruction set to the "classical" AVRs, and ticks up to 32MHz.

JW

Oops, yea, you are right, I am confused abt AVR32 and Xmega...Xmega still 8-bit...

cs

I'm happy ytd, today, and tmr :)

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stevech
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Posted by stevech: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 06:21 AM
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My get rich scheme:

cheap 8 bit microprocessor.
On-board divide by 1 million on clock input.
Outboard GHz clock input, hybrid IC.

Advertise it as a GHz micro.

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Ali_dehbidi
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Posted by Ali_dehbidi: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 08:09 AM
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another option is to use FPGA's.They are getting cheaper!

I love Digital
and you who involved in it!

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 09:43 AM
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I just bought this book:

http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~hamblen/book/bookte.htm

It's got three microprocessor designs in it: a very simple eight-bit device, and the 32-bit Altera NIOS II and MIPS processors.

I got the first book in the series some years ago and completed many of the exercises on an Altera Flex 10K10 PCB I designed, although they were intended for a much larger Flex device on an Altera board.

I'm working on the design of an Altera Cyclone III board for the new book. I'd have used the even cheaper new Cyclone IV chip, but they are difficult to get hold of.

A Jim Hamblen has been posting stuff to the Arduino forum recently, and I sent him a PM asking if he was the same person as the co-author of the book. He had been asked to take a course using the Arduino for some students.

I recommend the book, BTW. If anyone is interested in buying it, don't pay the full £50 or so for it, get one of the second-hand or cheap new copies that are available. I paid £25 for my brand-new copy.

There is an FPGA AVR implementation on the Open Cores web site that could easily be ported to my new board. It will run a lot faster than a real AVR, of course.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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Kartman
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Posted by Kartman: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 02:56 PM
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Fpgas are not the most efficient way of building a general purpose CPU! Dollar for dollar you can get more CPU performance from dedicated CPUs as compared with implementing one in a fpga.

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 04:08 PM
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If you need an FPGA anyway, it can be cost-effective compared to using an FPGA and an MCU. It also looks good on a CV. :)

Leon Heller G1HSM

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mhatter
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Posted by mhatter: Thu. Sep 9, 2010 - 04:29 PM
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I received the LPCXpresso1768 last night. I was able to get everything installed and started up one of the sample projects in about 10 minutes (including download time).

So far...

* Very easy setup
* Cheap
* Debugging setup is really nice
* Overall, IDE is ok
* PCB should be easy to prototype with

I'm at work now, but plan on running some benchmarks when I get home. I'll write up a review in a couple weeks and post it in the General Electronics forum.

Thanks for your help Freaks!

I have too many hobbies.
s-conductor.com

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westfw
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Posted by westfw: Sat. Sep 11, 2010 - 07:18 AM
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Quote:
The peripherals might be wildly incompatible

Who cares? When you start talking about code that fills up 256k or so, the part that actually talks to peripherals is relatively tiny.

For video, look at "leopardboard" (TI OMAP based, but specifically targeted to working with cameras, and includes a camera interface.)

As several people have pointed out, starting at about $100, you get the most bang-per-buck out of x86 PC clones. Boring. An mips/$ is not the only interesting metric for a computer.

It's WAY too late for FSF to claim that anything that vaguely touches gcc needs to become open source, but there are still a lot of unanswered ambiguities in the embedded space WRT things like libc. LGPL is ... very untested compared to GPL itself, and very messy if you're talking about a microcontroller with locked embedded flash...

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plc
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Posted by plc: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 09:20 AM
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clawson wrote:
But what sells Arduinos and Xpressos is/was the sub-£20/$30 price tag which makes them an "impulse buy" for many. When you get up to £40 or £60 you have to think long and hard as to "do I really need this just to 'play'?". I can well see Xpresso's taking Arduino market especially if the Code Red Eclipse was replaced by something far less daunting for beginners and a decent amount of pre-written (and WORKING!) library code were provided for cross-platform use. I doubt that beginners who just want to dip a toe in the water would be willing to splash out £60 on the Rowley offering however good it might turn out to be once they actually got it - Rowley's problem is that they just aren't going to take the chance.

Rowley Associates doesn't have a problem with customers "not taking the chance". We sell enough Personal Licenses to understand what market we are in. The SolderCore is rather different to what you have seen in the world so far, so without full information available to the public I find it hard to imagine how anybody can cast an opinion on how successful it will be.

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 09:42 AM
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Quote:

I find it hard to imagine how anybody can cast an opinion on how successful it will be.

True but this was touted as an alternative to Arduino/Xpresso type devices. Maybe it isn't a direct alternative and it's worth the £60+ but my point was that people will "impulse buy" something at ~£20 but they are unlikely to impulse buy something at THREE times the price. So it may well be great value and sell well but it sure ain't going to be competing in the N thousand/month Arduino/Xpresso market. For £60 I can buy a 1.6MHz Intel Atom motherboard (D410PT) with sufficient DRAM to run full desktop Linux on it which kind of puts 8bit eval/dev boards at that price into perspective! ( http://www.google.co.uk/products... )

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wek
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Posted by wek: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 10:19 AM
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clawson wrote:
So it may well be great value and sell well but it sure ain't going to be competing in the N thousand/month Arduino/Xpresso market.

Define "competing" ;-)

clawson wrote:
For £60 I can buy a 1.6MHz Intel Atom motherboard [...]
...or a bottle of a brand champagne. I am not sure which one would help with developing ARMs better... :-P

But, jokes aside - I am surprised 20-30GBP is the boundary for "product for masses" for this sort of "stuff" in the UK - 20-30E is maybe the point where I would expect sales to shrink to the few really interested one here - and I believed we are a comparatively poor country!

Jan

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 10:35 AM
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Jan,

When I make a Farnell order I think nothing of adding the odd £10-£20 "extra" into the shopping cart but I'm not sure I'd splash £60 on something just to see "is it any good?". I guess YMMV.

I'm sure the same goes for someone who just wants to make an RGB LED "mood light" or control a hobby servo or one of the million other things Arduino's get used for. The price is almost "throw away". £60 isn't. (well not in the world I live anyway - I do know someone worth £0.8bn and he changes his Rolls-Royce every time the ashtray gets filled!)

Cliff

(well OK, the Rolls-Royce thing isn't quite true)

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wek
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Posted by wek: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 12:03 PM
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Well, I assumed there are two cathegories of potential buyers of this "stuff": hobbyists who want to play (whre the 20-30E limit applies here, and I though somewhat higher amount in Western Europe); and professionals who want to use it (then there is virtually no limit).

You just defined a third group: professional who just "drops it" to a basket, to see eventually "is it any good"... Yeah, I do that from time to time, too; and the price limit is then lower accordingly. But I did not think that would be the buying power behind the Arduinos and kin.

JW

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 12:30 PM
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Quote:

You just defined a third group: professional who just "drops it" to a basket, to see eventually "is it any good"... Yeah, I do that from time to time

Personally I'd say that is just the professional with his "hobbyist" hat on so is the same as the first category. "Hobbyist" surely is the market for a complete programmable MCU dev system for £20/€25/$30? (Atmel also though so with the £20 Butterfly and in it's day I guess it was the Arduino of that era if a little spoiled by Atmel wasting so many potential IO on the poxy LCD display it has)

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wizhippo
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Posted by wizhippo: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 02:32 PM
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Quote:

True but this was touted as an alternative to Arduino/Xpresso type devices. Maybe it isn't a direct alternative and it's worth the £60+ but my point was that people will "impulse buy" something at ~£20 but they are unlikely to impulse buy something at THREE times the price. So it may well be great value and sell well but it sure ain't going to be competing in the N thousand/month Arduino/Xpresso market. For £60 I can buy a 1.6MHz Intel Atom motherboard (D410PT) with sufficient DRAM to run full desktop Linux on it which kind of puts 8bit eval/dev boards at that price into perspective! ( http://www.google.co.uk/products... )

Don't forget another 60 for the power supply. Still a good deal though.

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Gold Markclawson
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Posted by clawson: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 03:16 PM
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Quote:

Don't forget another 60 for the power supply

Make that £15

Board+CPU+graphics £46.50:
http://www.lambda-tek.com/compon...

1GB DIMM £15.63:
http://www.lambda-tek.com/compon...

ATX PSU £15.13:
http://www.lambda-tek.com/compon...

2GB USB memory to boot £4.39:
http://www.lambda-tek.com/compon...

So you have 1.6GHz of CPU with 1GB RAM, 2GB of secondary storage running for £81.65. Sure a bit more than £60 but that wasn't really my point. The point was that for £46.50 you get an AWFUL LOT of electronics. If AVR dev systems were priced with the similar economies of scale a 128K AVR system would be about £5-£10 and an ARM system with 128MB of DRAM (say) would be about £10.

If form factor is not important then you get about 10 times the performance with a 1.6GHz Atom than you do with similarly priced 100-200MHz ARM systems.

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smileymicros
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Posted by smileymicros: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 04:46 PM
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clawson wrote:
(Atmel also though so with the £20 Butterfly and in it's day I guess it was the Arduino of that era if a little spoiled by Atmel wasting so many potential IO on the poxy LCD display it has)
'...it's day...'? It is alive and well, thank you very much.

'...spoiled...'? It was designed as an ATmega169 LCD driver evaluation board, so the LCD was its purpose and the rest of the stuff was fun extras.

So with a built-in LCD for output and a joystick for input -- a volt meter, light meter, temperature sensor, piezo speaker, 4-Mbit DataFlash, and Real Time Clock. Did I leave anything out?

And its cheaper than an Arduino so it is still a viable low end platform.

Smiley

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wizhippo
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Posted by wizhippo: Tue. Sep 14, 2010 - 05:03 PM
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clawson wrote:
Quote:

Don't forget another 60 for the power supply

Make that £15

ATX PSU £15.13:
http://www.lambda-tek.com/compon...

I was looking in CAD$ and at a more embed-able type power supply where you don't have an outlet

$52.50 12-25v input http://www.logicsupply.com/produ...

Though there are cheapers ones for fixed 12v input

$25 12v input http://www.logicsupply.com/produ...

I just may pick myself up one of these systems.

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lammelm
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Posted by lammelm: Tue. Sep 21, 2010 - 12:04 AM
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leon_heller wrote:

There is an FPGA AVR implementation on the Open Cores web site that could easily be ported to my new board. It will run a lot faster than a real AVR, of course.

I took a look at that AVR projekt, but it seems to be abandoned, and not finished...

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leon_heller
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Posted by leon_heller: Tue. Sep 21, 2010 - 07:00 AM
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There are a couple of them, IIRC.

Leon Heller G1HSM

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