The Rabbits

Am 09.10.2011 02:09, schrieb hamilton:
> On 10/8/2011 8:38 AM, Philipp Klaus Krause wrote:
>> Am 07.10.2011 22:28, schrieb Jim Granville:
>>
>>>
>>> What peripheral features are there that have you looking at Rabbit ?
>>
>> I'm not looking at the Rabbit for a concrete project. I'm a sdcc
>> developer
> 
> How about concentrating on newer and more classy processors.
> 
> Z80 is dead, dead, dead.

Our Z80 backen has quite some users, I think it's the second most
popular. Z80 softcores are alive.

> 
> Yes, and I am sure you can create a compiler for the 8051 family as well.
> 
> Dead, dead, dead
>

Our 8051 backend is probably the one with the most users.

Philipp

On 10/8/2011 5:09 PM, hamilton wrote:
> On 10/8/2011 8:38 AM, Philipp Klaus Krause wrote:
>> Am 07.10.2011 22:28, schrieb Jim Granville:
>>
>>>
>>> What peripheral features are there that have you looking at Rabbit ?
>>
>> I'm not looking at the Rabbit for a concrete project. I'm a sdcc
>> developer
>
> How about concentrating on newer and more classy processors.
>
> Z80 is dead, dead, dead.
>
> Yes, and I am sure you can create a compiler for the 8051 family as well.
>
> Dead, dead, dead

I wouldn't write-off either of those families prematurely.
They are reasonably small cores so easy to place in an FPGA.
Certainly more appealing than designing you own core and then
having to write a set of tools to develop for it!

E.g., the military still uses 6502 based designs (or, at least,
they seem to express an unusual interest in that skillset!).
I'm pretty sure there was a rad-hardened 8080 (or 85?) many
years *after* the 808x had retired.

Some of these older designs scaled to today's technology would
be really speedy little devices!

Why would someone put the effort into creating a new standards compliant C =
compiler now?  What is the business case?  There are many more lucrative pr=
ocessor architectures around now that will give the compiler makers a good =
return on their investment.  Rabbit are unlikely to fund its development as=
 they have their own, non compliant tools that lock developers into using t=
heir devices.

The number of times that I have had to move up through processor families t=
o support more functionality on later generation products makes me very war=
y about locking in to some proprietary processor/language combination that =
limits my porting options.

Am 12.10.2011 10:34, schrieb ian.okey@gmail.com:
> Why would someone put the effort into creating a new standards
> compliant C compiler now?  What is the business case?  There are many
> more lucrative processor architectures around now that will give the
> compiler makers a good return on their investment.  Rabbit are
> unlikely to fund its development as they have their own, non
> compliant tools that lock developers into using their devices.

I do not see the need for a business case or return on investment.
They might make it slightly more likely that some software gets written,
but that's it.

> The number of times that I have had to move up through processor
> families to support more functionality on later generation products
> makes me very wary about locking in to some proprietary
> processor/language combination that limits my porting options.

Well, there already is the SoftTools compiler claiming standard
conformance. And while the sdcc Rabbit backend is still lacking support
for an address space larger than 64K, it otherwise does quite well.

Philipp

"I do not see the need for a business case or return on investment."
Most compiler vendors like to eat and do not want to live in cardboard boxes by the side of the road!

Op 14-Oct-11 15:13, ian.okey@gmail.com schreef:
> "I do not see the need for a business case or return on investment."
> Most compiler vendors like to eat and do not want to live in cardboard boxes by the side of the road!

I doubt that there are many projects on sourceforge.net that have a 
solid business case.