First Cortex-M3 MCUs available

>Their errata says 1.7mA, so no, it is not MSP430 area.

Thanks for that tip to look at errata. Sometimes I don't pay attention
to it, and I really should, of course.

I see 35 ma as typical full speed operating current in the spec sheet
(3.3v @ 20Mhz), and 1.7 ma in deep sleep.

This is definitely not a candidate for battery power. The lpc2103 has
better numbers than these, and the new lpc2888 is supposed to be able
to operate from a single 1.5v battery.

This is still an interesting device and I'll likely get the new dev
board from Rowley and check it out. But it lacks the main advantage I
was looking for.

Eric

Eric wrote:
>>Their errata says 1.7mA, so no, it is not MSP430 area.
> 
> 
> Thanks for that tip to look at errata. Sometimes I don't pay attention
> to it, and I really should, of course.
> 
> I see 35 ma as typical full speed operating current in the spec sheet
> (3.3v @ 20Mhz), and 1.7 ma in deep sleep.
> 
> This is definitely not a candidate for battery power. The lpc2103 has
> better numbers than these, and the new lpc2888 is supposed to be able
> to operate from a single 1.5v battery.
> 
> This is still an interesting device and I'll likely get the new dev
> board from Rowley and check it out. But it lacks the main advantage I
> was looking for.

If you are looking for better maths, and low power, the metering market
has some focused devices - and they need reasonable maths to get
accurate powers.

Companies like TDK have a C51 + CoPro, and Maxim has their MAXQ,
they claim is lowest power 16 bit CPU - but the mA/MHz need
to be watched on some models.


If you want real speed, in a new 32 bit core see

http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?section=ICNews&articleid=257140

( the SH2A, like Cortex, claims better code size (25% smaller), but
unlike the first Cortex-M3, hits ~160MHz and also claims "(Upward 
instruction compatibility is maintained with the SH-2 core.)"

-jg

want real speed, in a new 32 bit core see
>
> http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?section=ICNews&articleid=257140
>
> ( the SH2A, like Cortex, claims better code size (25% smaller), but
> unlike the first Cortex-M3, hits ~160MHz and also claims "(Upward instruction 
> compatibility is maintained with the SH-2 core.)"
>
> -jg
>
>
>

It's important to note that the core mA/MHz figure is almost irrelevant for low power, 
low on-cycle applications.
Sure, the MSP430 has a low mA/MHz figure but the clock ramp-up and flexibility, smart 
peripherals, low pin leakage are more important.

To chase low mA/MHz figures is naive for real applications unless the device spends a 
lot of time at full power. The MSP430 is still very hard to beat for low on-cycle, low 
power applications.

-Andrew M

"Jim Granville" <no.spam@designtools.co.nz> wrote in message 
news:44341ef4@clear.net.nz...
> Eric wrote:

> If you want real speed, in a new 32 bit core see
>
> http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?section=ICNews&articleid=257140
>
> ( the SH2A, like Cortex, claims better code size (25% smaller), but
> unlike the first Cortex-M3, hits ~160MHz and also claims "(Upward 
> instruction compatibility is maintained with the SH-2 core.)"

A few new instructions (they mention bitfield and division) isn't going to
give 25% average codesize improvement. Few instructions improve
codesize by more than 1% (bitfield instructions give far less), so you
do need to do something drastic to get to 25%.

It's interesting to note that Renesas recently licensed some ARM cores.

A similar MCU was announced by Philips (208Mhz ARM926EJ-S with
floating point hardware and Java acceleration):

http://www.standardics.philips.com/news/lpc3180/~LPC3180/#top

It looks like everybody is going after the high-end MCU (100+Mhz)
segment.

Wilco 

Wilco Dijkstra wrote:

> "Jim Granville" <no.spam@designtools.co.nz> wrote in message 
> news:44341ef4@clear.net.nz...
> 
>>Eric wrote:
> 
> 
>>If you want real speed, in a new 32 bit core see
>>
>>http://www10.edacafe.com/nbc/articles/view_article.php?section=ICNews&articleid=257140
>>
>>( the SH2A, like Cortex, claims better code size (25% smaller), but
>>unlike the first Cortex-M3, hits ~160MHz and also claims "(Upward 
>>instruction compatibility is maintained with the SH-2 core.)"
> 
> 
> A few new instructions (they mention bitfield and division) isn't going to
> give 25% average codesize improvement. Few instructions improve
> codesize by more than 1% (bitfield instructions give far less), so you
> do need to do something drastic to get to 25%.
> 
> It's interesting to note that Renesas recently licensed some ARM cores.
> 
> A similar MCU was announced by Philips (208Mhz ARM926EJ-S with
> floating point hardware and Java acceleration):
> 
> http://www.standardics.philips.com/news/lpc3180/~LPC3180/#top
> 
> It looks like everybody is going after the high-end MCU (100+Mhz)
> segment.

  True.

  What sets the SH2A appart a little from the others (AVR32, LPC3180 
Fujitsu, Freescale etc), is the SH2A claims 160MHz/320 MIPS from 
internal flash(512KF).
  Most other internal flash specs are 50/60/80MHz region.

  Flash has always been a weakspot, and flash has been getting faster 
slower than the cores.

  Analog Devices dumped their FLASH DSPs, and went for RAM cores instead.

  -jg