On Sep 2, 7:37=A0pm, "Dave Graffio" <wscra...@yahoo.com> wrote:> "antedeluvian" wrote... > >A really great part is the Cypress PSOC5 which gives a great deal of > > flexibilty because of its configurabilty. > > > Unfortunately it appears to be made of pure unobtanium. > > Not true. I've heard it's being designed by the engineering firm of Tuttl=e and Dunsel.> (Capt, Retired)Dave, you heard strange things such as Luminary (TI) being low quality. They manufacture on one of the highest quality production lines in the world TSMC. Marvell does not design and manufacture MCUs, they do high end application processors, no flash but lots of MHz. Atmel started strong with ARM7 and ARM9 but is weak in Cortex-M3, their focus shifted very much towards AVR32. NXP offers the fastest Cortex-M3 with Flash, btw. did you know that Toshiba has the fastest M3 running from internal SDRAM? Did you know that Energy Micro achieve better power numbers using the Cortex-M3 then any other vendor even those using Cortex-M0? PSoC5 is a great product and if your volume production does not start before 2011, you might want to order a FirstTouch for PSoC 5, just $49 free tools, several sensors for acceleration, temperature, capacitive touch and readily available. Got one on my desk, like it. http://www.cypress.com/psoc5 is a good place to start. I could write a lot more about ARM / Cortex-MCUs because that's what I have been dealing with since the first ARM7 MCUs hit the market. If you need professional help, with the selection write an email to microcontroller (skip this at gmail) -dod comm It would go a long way if you would list your requirements, you get better answers. For a list with many articles about Cortex based MCUs check out this one: http://mcu-related.com/architectures/35-cortex-m3 Cheers, An Schwob
Compare ARM MCU Vendors
Started by ●September 1, 2010
Reply by ●September 3, 20102010-09-03
Reply by ●September 4, 20102010-09-04
On Thu, 2 Sep 2010 09:54:46 -0400, "Dave Graffio" <wscratch@yahoo.com> wrote:> >"David Brown" wrote... >> On 02/09/2010 00:37, Dave Graffio wrote: >>> How do you compare ARM MCU manufacturers for a project in the USA? >>> >>> I see Atmel, St micro, nxp, Texas instr, Freescale, Marvell - are they all selling >>> the >>> same stuff or is there any real difference? I see St has faster parts but Atmel has >>> more >>> of them. Is price and support all the same? >>> >>> Google doesn't seem to show any information anywhere on this, which is really >>> shocking. >>> >>> I am wondering if I should move between them or standardize on one company. >>> >>> >> >> Have you tried talking to the distributors? My first thought on a question like this >> would be to ring an FAE at Arrow, EBV, Future, Silica, etc. (pick your own favourite). >> They should be able to tell you a bit about the pros and cons of the manufacturers, >> including technical issues, non-technical issues (prices, lead times), and non-public >> issues (future plans, reliability questions, etc.). > >Yes, but I'm looking for other perspectives as well. Rich Webb's criteria of looking at >the variety of development boards looks brilliant and a distributor won't tell you that. >It seems to me that the more 3rd party development boards there are for a part, the more >popular that part is, right?> >I've had people shoo me away from NXP because they are not reliable.What kind of things did they say were unreliable about NXP ?? Too many Device errata or something like that ? Or something else ?? boB Linnix is right, if>you're not high volume Marvel wants nothing to do with you. Freescale focuses on their >own proprietary 32-bit. ST and Atmel have the lowest power. TI has Luminary's Cortex >which I've been told is lower quality to everyone else. > > > >
Reply by ●September 4, 20102010-09-04
"An Schwob in the USA" wrote in message ... On Sep 2, 7:37 pm, "Dave Graffio" <wscra...@yahoo.com> wrote:> > "antedeluvian" wrote... > > >A really great part is the Cypress PSOC5 which gives a great deal of > > > flexibilty because of its configurabilty. > > > > > Unfortunately it appears to be made of pure unobtanium. > > > > Not true. I've heard it's being designed by the engineering firm of Tuttle and > > Dunsel. > > (Capt, Retired) > > Dave, > > you heard strange things such as Luminary (TI) being low quality. They > manufacture on one of the highest quality production lines in the > world TSMC.I never doubted TSMC. When we de-capped the Luminary products we found that they had stripped some logic to reduce die size and get their costs down. I believe that TI has since corrected the issues, but I'm not sure.> Marvell does not design and manufacture MCUs, they do high > end application processors, no flash but lots of MHz. Atmel started > strong with ARM7 and ARM9 but is weak in Cortex-M3, their focus > shifted very much towards AVR32.Gotcha. But I gotta disagree with you on Atmel, they will be introducing a lot of new Cortex parts in 2011> NXP offers the fastest Cortex-M3 with > Flash, btw. did you know that Toshiba has the fastest M3 running from > internal SDRAM?NXP's errata is unacceptable, while Atmel's SAM3U is 96MHz, Atmel's ADC is better. The Toshiba parts are nice.> Did you know that Energy Micro achieve better power > numbers using the Cortex-M3 then any other vendor even those using > Cortex-M0?Nice parts. Too early to judge the company, though. I hope they do well.> PSoC5 is a great product and if your volume production does not start > before 2011, you might want to order a FirstTouch for PSoC 5, just $49 > free tools, several sensors for acceleration, temperature, capacitive > touch and readily available. Got one on my desk, like it. > http://www.cypress.com/psoc5 is a good place to start.Nice parts.
Reply by ●September 5, 20102010-09-05
2010-09-02 00:37, Dave Graffio skrev:> How do you compare ARM MCU manufacturers for a project in the USA? > > I see Atmel, St micro, nxp, Texas instr, Freescale, Marvell - are they all selling the > same stuff or is there any real difference? I see St has faster parts but Atmel has more > of them. Is price and support all the same? > > Google doesn't seem to show any information anywhere on this, which is really shocking. > > I am wondering if I should move between them or standardize on one company. > >You will find the difference in the peripherals. Most toolchains worth their salt, support all major ARM manufacturers. If you can afford it, you want second source of everything you do. As for speed, most current flash based ARMs/CM3s are limited by flash waitstates and there is very little performance increase once you reach those 60-70 MHz. While a CM3 at zero waitstates is 1.25 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz, the performance at 100 MHz with 4 waitstates is more like 0,85 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz. Using a Keil compiler, I measured the difference between running at 84 MHz and 96 Mhz to be less than 1%. This was more than one year ago, but I doubt that this will change until people start to put faster flash memories into the products. -- Best Regards Ulf Samuelsson These are my own personal opinions, which may (or may not) be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB
Reply by ●September 9, 20102010-09-09
On Sep 2, 10:37 pm, "Dave Graffio" <wscra...@yahoo.com> wrote:> "antedeluvian" wrote... > >A really great part is the Cypress PSOC5 which gives a great deal of > > flexibilty because of its configurabilty. > > > Unfortunately it appears to be made of pure unobtanium. > > Not true. I've heard it's being designed by the engineering firm of Tuttle and Dunsel. > (Capt, Retired)I first heard about the PSOC5 three years ago when they said it would be out in a year. That year turned into 18 months, then 2 years,... until in early 2010 they announced the PSOC5 would be shipping in Q2. That date never changed that I read. Did they ship in Q2? I can't say, but right now, when Q3 is nearly over, if you *really* want a PSOC5 badly, you can get them for $64.84 each in qty 1, or qty 100 or qty whatever by buying a CY8CKIT-010 and unsoldering the CPU chip. So they are shipping, just not very many. I figure they will actually be ready to ship for production about the time they are thoroughly obsolete. I still have no idea if they will be affordable for any of my designs. Rick
Reply by ●September 9, 20102010-09-09
> As for speed, most current flash based ARMs/CM3s are limited by > flash waitstates and there is very little performance increase > once you reach those 60-70 MHz. > > While a CM3 at zero waitstates is 1.25 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz, > the performance at 100 MHz with 4 waitstates is more like > 0,85 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz. > > Using a Keil compiler, I measured the difference between > running at 84 MHz and 96 Mhz to be less than 1%. > This was more than one year ago, but I doubt that this will change > until people start to put faster flash memories into the products. >Or putting instruction cache there.
Reply by ●September 9, 20102010-09-09
On Sep 2, 10:37=A0am, "Dave Graffio" <wscra...@yahoo.com> wrote:> How do you compare ARM MCU manufacturers for a project in the USA? >...> I am wondering if I should move between them or standardize on one compan=y. You will find the selection often is based more on the Peripherals or other features, not the core. For example, we like 12b ADC and 5V operation (for direct PowerMOSFET drive), and this new family, adds to the list : http://www.nuvoton.com/hq/enu/web/Pages/default.aspx Their NUC1xx family development tools, and devices are showing in stock at Nu Horizons. NUTINY-SDK-120 is ~$21 A 32KF M0 device shows in stock at $1.70 Even their NUC501, which targets toys, looks useful. ARM7, 32K RAM, with USB/ADC/DAC/UART/SPI/i2c, it could become a more flexible FTDI type device. At $1.54, that's got potential as USB debug-dongle etc, but it currently lacks a low cost eval path. Needs a USB-Stick... (unclear if the N55UL501 is the same, or a new-spin?) -jg
Reply by ●September 13, 20102010-09-13
On 10 Sep., 00:45, -jg <jim.granvi...@gmail.com> wrote:> On Sep 2, 10:37=A0am, "Dave Graffio" <wscra...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > > How do you compare ARM MCU manufacturers for a project in the USA? > > ... > > I am wondering if I should move between them or standardize on one comp=any.> > =A0You will find the selection often is based more on the Peripherals or > other features, not the core. > > =A0For example, we like 12b ADC and 5V operation (for direct PowerMOSFET > drive), and this new family, adds to the list : > > http://www.nuvoton.com/hq/enu/web/Pages/default.aspx > > Their NUC1xx family development tools, and devices are showing in > stock at Nu Horizons. > NUTINY-SDK-120 is ~$21 > A 32KF M0 device shows in stock at $1.70 > > Even their NUC501, which targets toys, looks useful. > ARM7, 32K RAM, with USB/ADC/DAC/UART/SPI/i2c, it could become a more > flexible FTDI type device.For a FTDI type device I find the AT90USB162 just amazing: small, cheap, easy to use, USB firmware out of the box, widely available, and is a USABLE 8-bit MCU, not simply a peripheral. JaaC
Reply by ●September 13, 20102010-09-13
linnix skrev:>> As for speed, most current flash based ARMs/CM3s are limited by >> flash waitstates and there is very little performance increase >> once you reach those 60-70 MHz. >> >> While a CM3 at zero waitstates is 1.25 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz, >> the performance at 100 MHz with 4 waitstates is more like >> 0,85 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz. >> >> Using a Keil compiler, I measured the difference between >> running at 84 MHz and 96 Mhz to be less than 1%. >> This was more than one year ago, but I doubt that this will change >> until people start to put faster flash memories into the products. >> > > Or putting instruction cache there.That might work but I am not aware of this solution beeing implemented anywhere. It was not neccessarily a good idea with the ARM7. If you added an insruction cache you added 1 waitstate to all accesses. Good for top performance on some apps, but certainly reduced the worst case performance, which sometimes is more important. -- Best Regards Ulf Samuelsson These are my own personal opinions, which may or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB
Reply by ●September 15, 20102010-09-15
On 13/09/2010 17:05, Ulf Samuelsson wrote:> linnix skrev: >>> As for speed, most current flash based ARMs/CM3s are limited by >>> flash waitstates and there is very little performance increase >>> once you reach those 60-70 MHz. >>> >>> While a CM3 at zero waitstates is 1.25 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz, >>> the performance at 100 MHz with 4 waitstates is more like >>> 0,85 Dhrystone MIPS/MHz. >>> >>> Using a Keil compiler, I measured the difference between >>> running at 84 MHz and 96 Mhz to be less than 1%. >>> This was more than one year ago, but I doubt that this will change >>> until people start to put faster flash memories into the products. >>> >> >> Or putting instruction cache there. > > That might work but I am not aware of this solution beeing implemented > anywhere. > > It was not neccessarily a good idea with the ARM7. > If you added an insruction cache you > added 1 waitstate to all accesses. > > Good for top performance on some apps, but certainly > reduced the worst case performance, which sometimes > is more important. >A better solution for micros like that is a wider flash design with an sram buffer in the flash module - that is certainly how some manufacturers handle the problem. It is a simpler solution than a full instruction cache because you have only a single "tag" (or perhaps two, if you have two such buffers), and there are no issues with coherence or anything else. The buffer of perhaps 256 bytes gets filled whenever you access a new "page" in the flash, so that the processor then reads from the buffer rather than directly from the flash. And if space/economics allow, you have have a wider flash-to-buffer bus to keep up a high bandwidth even with slow flash and a fast processor.
