Getting started with ARM processors - recommendations

fvnktion wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> I have been using 8/16 micros for a number of years and am finding the
> need
> to step up to 32 bit processing.  I am tempted to jump into the use of
> microchips 32bit processors, but based on extremely the poor technical
> support I have received in the past I am thinking about moving over to an
> ARM product. Another for moving to ARM is that I will also likely start
> using the Actel lower power FPGAs, which some have a built in ARM hard -
> Core.
[%X]

Try <http://www.mpeforth.com/>

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett...............<email://Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-510979
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
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On 26/10/10 18:58, fvnktion wrote:
> Thank you all for the very informed advice.  This will greatly benefit me
> in the transition.  I will likely start working with some of these newer
> devices until comfortable and then fully transition away from the microchip
> product.
>
> By the way I just got off the phone with sourcery.  They highly recommended
> the TI stellaris cortex M3 famil as they offer very wide support and a very
> discounted dicounted G++ package directed for its use.  Interestingly the
> Stellaris has not been aforementioned.  It looks like a nice product with
> TI support.  I will continue to do further research and try and narrow down
> a supplier.    	
> 					

We use Stellaris chips for a few designs - so far, they've been quite 
good.  Their evaluation kits at very cheap and easy to work with, and 
the CodeSourcery support is solid.  As you say, CodeSourcery have a 
low-price version that only supports Stellaris, or you can get the full 
ARM toolchains that support the full range of ARM devices.

A particularly nice feature of the Stellaris chips is the very flexible 
IO - most of the IO functions (UARTs, timers, etc.) can be connected to 
several different pins.

On 26/10/10 18:58, fvnktion wrote:
> Thank you all for the very informed advice.  This will greatly benefit me
> in the transition.  I will likely start working with some of these newer
> devices until comfortable and then fully transition away from the microchip
> product.
>
> By the way I just got off the phone with sourcery.  They highly recommended
> the TI stellaris cortex M3 famil as they offer very wide support and a very
> discounted dicounted G++ package directed for its use.  Interestingly the
> Stellaris has not been aforementioned.  It looks like a nice product with
> TI support.  I will continue to do further research and try and narrow down
> a supplier.    	
> 					

Another manufacturer no one seems to have mentioned is Energy Micros. 
They make very low power Cortex devices.  I haven't used them or looked 
at them in much detail, but if low power is important then they are 
worth a look.

On Oct 26, 11:41=A0am, "fvnktion" <fvnktionforums@n_o_s_p_a_m.yahoo.com>
wrote:
> As well the
> debuggers are cross compatible. =A0The code libraries are immense and the
> forum support has been good. =A0The only downfall being the separate purc=
hase
> of the 32 bit compiler.

This can be an important detail, so you should at least get a PIC32
starter system and try it.

The ARM ecosystem is large, and broad, with M4 parts soon from NXP and
Freescale, and M0 parts from NXP and Nuvoton.
- as well as M3 from many suppliers.

Overall, the Starter systems are quite cheap, so buy more than one,
and install the code and test it.

A new entrant that appeals to me, is the Nuvoton M0 parts,  because
they are 5V operation, and they have
some 8051 flavoured (pin/peripheral) variants (M05x), that are quite
cheap (some under $1, and a low cost eval/debug board ~$20) In stock
at NuHorizons.

http://www.nuvoton.com/NuvotonMOSS/Community/ProductInfo.aspx?tp_GUID=3D8e1=
667bb-6e5b-42a9-8810-7e29a23ae1a5

Cypress PSoC5 could be nice, if it ever fully releases..
at sensible prices.

-jg

David Brown skrev:
> On 26/10/10 18:58, fvnktion wrote:
>> Thank you all for the very informed advice.  This will greatly benefit me
>> in the transition.  I will likely start working with some of these newer
>> devices until comfortable and then fully transition away from the 
>> microchip
>> product.
>>
>> By the way I just got off the phone with sourcery.  They highly 
>> recommended
>> the TI stellaris cortex M3 famil as they offer very wide support and a 
>> very
>> discounted dicounted G++ package directed for its use.  Interestingly the
>> Stellaris has not been aforementioned.  It looks like a nice product with
>> TI support.  I will continue to do further research and try and narrow 
>> down
>> a supplier.       
>>                    
> 
> Another manufacturer no one seems to have mentioned is Energy Micros. 
> They make very low power Cortex devices.  I haven't used them or looked 
> at them in much detail, but if low power is important then they are 
> worth a look.
> 


Yes,
They are almost as low power as the AVR32 based AT32UC3L (0,29 mW/MHz),
but not quite ;-)
The AVR32 is more in the Cortex-M4 class, than the M3.

A toolchain which might be worth looking at for an Atmel SAM3 
(Cortex-M3) is Atollic TrueStudio.
This is a free of charge Eclipse/gcc environment.
There is also a "Pro" version which supports a lot of fancy features,
but cost some money.
The SAM3S will support FPGA communication over a parallel bus
even with a 100 pin part.

If you start to read in on the soft ARM cores from Actel,
you will find that the small FPGAs will fit the core,
but nothing else. Not even on-chip debugging.
The newer variants with CM3 hardcore are quite expensive.

An MCU + FPGA is likely the best alternative, unless you have
real space constraints.


-- 
Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson
These are my own personal opinions, which may
or may not be shared by my employer Atmel Nordic AB

On 10/28/2010 3:18 PM, Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
> The AVR32 is more in the Cortex-M4 class, than the M3.

How does the AVR32 compare to the MIPS processors ??

hamilton

On 29/10/2010 02:36, hamilton wrote:
> On 10/28/2010 3:18 PM, Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
>> The AVR32 is more in the Cortex-M4 class, than the M3.
>
> How does the AVR32 compare to the MIPS processors ??
>

It compares with difficulty.

MIPS is a family of licensable cores covering a huge spread.  The 
microMIPS cores will be probably be smaller and lower power than an 
AVR32 (though it will depend on the implementation), while the biggest 
cores are orders of magnitude faster.  "MIPS" is more like "ARM" in this 
respect.

The most power-efficient MIPS core is probably the M14Kc at 90nm, and if 
you accept the raw figures from MIPS website it has a core power of 0.08 
mW/mHz, runs at 200 MHz and does 1.5 DMIPS/MHz.

If you look at the list of MIPS licensees, you will not have heard of 
most of the companies.  And of those you have heard of, you know most of 
them as end-product manufacturers (such as Cisco).  There are familiar 
names on the list, such as Texas Instruments, but you won't find a 
mention of MIPS on their website - they have it available as a core for 
their ASIC customers.  MIPS processors are one of the most widely used 
architectures (I'd love to see figures comparing the numbers of MIPS, 
ARM and x86 processors in use).  But they are also mostly invisible 
unless you are in the market for at least hundreds of thousands of 
devices at a time, or are involved in particular market segments 
(high-end networking and set-top boxes are a couple of examples).

The only MIPS devices that are easily available in the mass market are 
the Microchip PIC32 devices.  AFAIK, they use the M4K - a somewhat 
larger and older core than the above-mentioned M14Kc.  How it compares 
in power to the AVR32 devices, I don't know.

On 10/29/2010 2:07 AM, David Brown wrote:
> On 29/10/2010 02:36, hamilton wrote:
>> On 10/28/2010 3:18 PM, Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
>>> The AVR32 is more in the Cortex-M4 class, than the M3.
>>
>> How does the AVR32 compare to the MIPS processors ??
>>
>
> It compares with difficulty.
>
> MIPS is a family of licensable cores covering a huge spread. The
> microMIPS cores will be probably be smaller and lower power than an
> AVR32 (though it will depend on the implementation), while the biggest
> cores are orders of magnitude faster. "MIPS" is more like "ARM" in this
> respect.
>
> The most power-efficient MIPS core is probably the M14Kc at 90nm, and if
> you accept the raw figures from MIPS website it has a core power of 0.08
> mW/mHz, runs at 200 MHz and does 1.5 DMIPS/MHz.
>
> If you look at the list of MIPS licensees, you will not have heard of
> most of the companies. And of those you have heard of, you know most of
> them as end-product manufacturers (such as Cisco). There are familiar
> names on the list, such as Texas Instruments, but you won't find a
> mention of MIPS on their website - they have it available as a core for
> their ASIC customers. MIPS processors are one of the most widely used
> architectures (I'd love to see figures comparing the numbers of MIPS,
> ARM and x86 processors in use). But they are also mostly invisible
> unless you are in the market for at least hundreds of thousands of
> devices at a time, or are involved in particular market segments
> (high-end networking and set-top boxes are a couple of examples).
>
> The only MIPS devices that are easily available in the mass market are
> the Microchip PIC32 devices. AFAIK, they use the M4K - a somewhat larger
> and older core than the above-mentioned M14Kc. How it compares in power
> to the AVR32 devices, I don't know.

Thank you for this explanation.

I will look at PIC32, FMI .

hamilton

On 29 Oct, 09:07, David Brown <da...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com>
wrote:
> On 29/10/2010 02:36, hamilton wrote:

> The only MIPS devices that are easily available in the mass market are
> the Microchip PIC32 devices. =A0AFAIK, they use the M4K - a somewhat
> larger and older core than the above-mentioned M14Kc. =A0How it compares
> in power to the AVR32 devices, I don't know.

They have just announced that they are licensing the M14K.

Leon

On Oct 29, 4:07 am, David Brown <da...@westcontrol.removethisbit.com>
wrote:
> On 29/10/2010 02:36, hamilton wrote:
>
> > On 10/28/2010 3:18 PM, Ulf Samuelsson wrote:
> >> The AVR32 is more in the Cortex-M4 class, than the M3.
>
> > How does the AVR32 compare to the MIPS processors ??
>
> It compares with difficulty.
>
> MIPS is a family of licensable cores covering a huge spread.  The
> microMIPS cores will be probably be smaller and lower power than an
> AVR32 (though it will depend on the implementation), while the biggest
> cores are orders of magnitude faster.  "MIPS" is more like "ARM" in this
> respect.

I guess you can't knock the MIPS parts for being a poor step child
like the AVR32.  It may not be available from more than one maker as a
standard part, it does have a huge base of users, etc.  So it is not
likely to go away... at least not as a core.  Has Microchip been
selling these chips in high enough volume to assure that they will
continue to make them for years to come?  That would be my biggest
concern at this point.

The other 32 bit chips with a sole source core may have commitment
from their makers.  Renesas for example, will not likely drop their
offerings.  But Toshiba has at least put one foot on the ARM
bandwagon.  I can't imagine they will continue to develop and promote
both product lines indefinitely, likewise for Atmel, regardless of
what some will tell you.

So if the PIC32 parts don't sell well, how much pain is Microchip
willing to take before they drop the line???  I guess if they are
licensing the M14K core, they are at least going to continue with this
part for another five years.


> The most power-efficient MIPS core is probably the M14Kc at 90nm, and if
> you accept the raw figures from MIPS website it has a core power of 0.08
> mW/mHz, runs at 200 MHz and does 1.5 DMIPS/MHz.
>
> If you look at the list of MIPS licensees, you will not have heard of
> most of the companies.  And of those you have heard of, you know most of
> them as end-product manufacturers (such as Cisco).  There are familiar
> names on the list, such as Texas Instruments, but you won't find a
> mention of MIPS on their website - they have it available as a core for
> their ASIC customers.  MIPS processors are one of the most widely used
> architectures (I'd love to see figures comparing the numbers of MIPS,
> ARM and x86 processors in use).  But they are also mostly invisible
> unless you are in the market for at least hundreds of thousands of
> devices at a time, or are involved in particular market segments
> (high-end networking and set-top boxes are a couple of examples).
>
> The only MIPS devices that are easily available in the mass market are
> the Microchip PIC32 devices.  AFAIK, they use the M4K - a somewhat
> larger and older core than the above-mentioned M14Kc.  How it compares
> in power to the AVR32 devices, I don't know.

I'm sure they are working to keep up with anything the ARM camp throws
at them.  If they are going in ASICs, I expect they aren't just being
selected because of the existing code base.  They also need to be
technically competitive.

Rick