LPC213x IDE

Friends,

For a current LPC213x project we purchased the IAR Embedded Workbench
development kit (about $4k if I remember right) with a J-link USB->JTAG.
It's "ok", but it doesn't give me that warm and fuzzy feeling of
complete trust. The UI behaves funky (resizing toolboxes by itself,
suddenly refusing to set breakpoints, etc.), the compiler seems to be
a bit buggy sometimes, and the C library have a few quirks too.

Did anyone out there try the Keil IDE for ARM7? Anyone with experience
from both IAR and Keil? Is the GNU stuff an option if I don't want to
spend two months setting up my debugging environment?

Thanks,
  </A>

Anders wrote:

> For a current LPC213x project we purchased the IAR Embedded Workbench
> development kit (about $4k if I remember right) with a J-link USB->JTAG.

I have a longtime loathing for IAR.

JTAG oddities are, however, not necessarily the toolchain's fault -
there's a lot of potential bringup hair-pulling caused by the target.
I've just squashed a very annoying intermittent problem I was having
with my AVR JTAG debugging setup, which turned out to be caused by
fluctuations in VREF (nowhere in the documentation can I find it stated
that the JTAG interface requires VREF, by the way!)

> from both IAR and Keil? Is the GNU stuff an option if I don't want to
> spend two months setting up my debugging environment?

gcc is my preferred ARM development environment. I don't know how well
you will fare with that particular JTAG adapter, though.

larwe wrote:
> Anders wrote:
> 
>> For a current LPC213x project we purchased the IAR Embedded Workbench
>> development kit (about $4k if I remember right) with a J-link USB->JTAG.
> 
> I have a longtime loathing for IAR.
> 
> JTAG oddities are, however, not necessarily the toolchain's fault -
> there's a lot of potential bringup hair-pulling caused by the target.
> I've just squashed a very annoying intermittent problem I was having
> with my AVR JTAG debugging setup, which turned out to be caused by
> fluctuations in VREF (nowhere in the documentation can I find it stated
> that the JTAG interface requires VREF, by the way!)
> 
>> from both IAR and Keil? Is the GNU stuff an option if I don't want to
>> spend two months setting up my debugging environment?
> 
> gcc is my preferred ARM development environment. I don't know how well
> you will fare with that particular JTAG adapter, though.
> 

 > JTAG oddities are, however, not necessarily the toolchain's fault -
 > there's a lot of potential bringup hair-pulling caused by the target.

One annoying issue I have is that the JTAG doesn't stop the timers.
That causes my OS to freak out since it's missing ticks and effectively
limits debugging to having to reset after every breakpoint. If I had any
hair I would have pulled it by now - but like you say, that's not the
tools fault ;)

 > gcc is my preferred ARM development environment. I don't know how well
 > you will fare with that particular JTAG adapter, though.

gcc is just the compiler, right? I'd need a debugger too I guess?
Is there a package put together with compiler/linker/debugger
all-in-one, ready to install and run? What adapter should I get?

Thanks,
  </A>

Anders wrote:

> gcc is just the compiler, right? I'd need a debugger too I guess?
> Is there a package put together with compiler/linker/debugger
> all-in-one, ready to install and run? What adapter should I get?

When I say "gcc" I'm really referring to the complete GNU toolchain,
comprising GNU make, gas assembler, gcc compiler, ld linker, gdb
debugger, etc. If you require graphical frippery, insight is the
graphical layer over gdb.

http://www.macraigor.com/swproducts.htm is one fast place to get
precompiled binaries for ARM. I have their Wiggler cheap low-end
parallel port JTAG tool. Olimex sells one much cheaper which is
essentially the same hardware.

"Anders" <nospam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:ZJRyf.11448$PL5.4462@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> Friends,
>
> For a current LPC213x project we purchased the IAR Embedded Workbench
> development kit (about $4k if I remember right) with a J-link USB->JTAG.
> It's "ok", but it doesn't give me that warm and fuzzy feeling of
> complete trust. The UI behaves funky (resizing toolboxes by itself,
> suddenly refusing to set breakpoints, etc.), the compiler seems to be
> a bit buggy sometimes, and the C library have a few quirks too.
>
> Did anyone out there try the Keil IDE for ARM7? Anyone with experience
> from both IAR and Keil? Is the GNU stuff an option if I don't want to
> spend two months setting up my debugging environment?
>
> Thanks,
>   </A>

If you can afford it, I can recommend GreenHills Multi2000. Excellent tools,
once you get used to it. Although, I am not using it with flash-based
devices,
but I debug code from RAM...

- Dejan

have a look here

http://www.keil.com/benchmks/carm_v0code.htm

"Anders" <nospam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:ZJRyf.11448$PL5.4462@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> Friends,
>
> For a current LPC213x project we purchased the IAR Embedded Workbench
> development kit (about $4k if I remember right) with a J-link USB->JTAG.
> It's "ok", but it doesn't give me that warm and fuzzy feeling of
> complete trust. The UI behaves funky (resizing toolboxes by itself,
> suddenly refusing to set breakpoints, etc.), the compiler seems to be
> a bit buggy sometimes, and the C library have a few quirks too.
>
> Did anyone out there try the Keil IDE for ARM7? Anyone with experience
> from both IAR and Keil? Is the GNU stuff an option if I don't want to
> spend two months setting up my debugging environment?
>
> Thanks,
>   </A>

Sagaert Johan wrote:
> have a look here
> 
> http://www.keil.com/benchmks/carm_v0code.htm

Thanks,
I've seen that, and even though I'm sure it's biased a bit I must
admit it scares me from using gcc stuff. I'm doing some pretty
serious cruching (AES,GSM,tight comms timing) so a compiler that
spits out slow code is the last thing I want.
..but I'll try anything once ;)

I've used uVision before on other targets, but not the debugger.

Does it support profiling/code coverage through JTAG or is that
a limitation of the target? IAR has the feature, but it only works
in simulation mode so it's useless for me...

Anders wrote:

> > http://www.keil.com/benchmks/carm_v0code.htm
>
> I've seen that, and even though I'm sure it's biased a bit I must
> admit it scares me from using gcc stuff. I'm doing some pretty

Yes, I'm sure it's totally unbiased :)

Since Keil is now owned by ARM, I would expect their compiler quality
to be at the forefront of ARM technology, if not now then soon.

In my projects _to date_ this has not been critical. Once in a while I
have asked colleagues to compile code snippets for me in alien
compilers to see if there is a significant performance difference. I
have not so far found any difference that would lead to my use of gcc
requiring a "bump" in CPU performance. The optimizations that mean the
most to me stem from judicious choice of algorithms and (where
necessary) snippets of assembly language. YMMV, of course.

> Since Keil is now owned by ARM, I would expect their compiler quality
> to be at the forefront of ARM technology, if not now then soon.

Aha! That was a piece of news I had missed. That certainly gives Keil
an edge for the future. Now I know what to put in my budget for 2006 :)

Thanks for the insight!

I'll still give gcc a go some day. If I get my stuff to run I'll
post the results.

"larwe" <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> writes:

> Anders wrote:
>
>> > http://www.keil.com/benchmks/carm_v0code.htm
>>
>> I've seen that, and even though I'm sure it's biased a bit I must
>> admit it scares me from using gcc stuff. I'm doing some pretty
>
> Yes, I'm sure it's totally unbiased :)

That page is starting to get me really annoyed.

Look at this:

<http://www.compuphase.com/dhrystone.htm>

It looks like Keil did not even turn on optimization for GNU (but they
did for their own tools!).

Surprise surprise - their tools, *with* optimisation, were better than
free tools, *not* optimised. But the real surprise is that when
optimisation was turned on for both, it was the *free* tools that were
better than Keils!


-- 

John Devereux