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News from Embedded World in Nurnber

News from Embedded World News, Nurnberg 14.02.2006

Actel ===== Had no booth, but Actel-guy was moving around so I catched him.

Actel Fusion FPGAs: Delayed for 6 months. Do not expect Fusion silicon samples or starterkit sooner! Dont beg, dont ask - all Fusion silicon available has been allocated. This was really sad for me as I did order and pay for Actel Fusion starterkit already last year.

Altera ====== Stratix IIGX sample shipping: week12 (end of march)

65nm FPGAs will be announced in 2006 or in worst case "within 1 year from today" There was fractal-movie running on NIOS board with DMA coupled hardware accelerator. When I asked about the camera, then it was just a matter of selecting different application using touch-screen interface (KROS board plugged into Avalon slot) and the camera demo was running. I got a overshoulder bag with 12cm small ball inside, my 2 year old daughter Anna likes the ball a lot.

Atmel ===== AVR32 Architecture was launched, they had a gpraphical demonstration with real AVR32 silicon chip, well it was marked with code name "Morgan" and there was no actual info about any AVR32 'orderable parts' only benchmark comparisons that seemed to prove that AVR32 ISA beats ARM at 50% on all accounts.

STK525 starterkit (with AT90USB1286) was on display priced 200EUR is immediatly available.

AT90USB1287 - real nice chip is also available that is distributors must accept orders as order entry from Atmel is open - so if your disti says AT90SUB1287 is not orderable then the disti has not up-to-date info.

USBKEY Demo board costs 30USD and is based on AT90SUB1287 I did see it working at the booth - this board is not immediatly avaiable as there are 20 of them manufactured as of today (2 of them being at embedded) but it should be orderable and should be shipping shortly as well.

Lattice ======= On my inquirey: "LatticeSC sample silicon is it available today?" the anser was yes. But asking that a few more times the anser changed to 2006 Q2, meaning that samples for SC25 may or may not be available immediatly. LatticeSC evaluation board (with SC25) is however defenetly available immediatly on a 'loaner' basis. Its a nice board with PCIe 8 channel edge connector and lots of SMAs. The question is SC25 suitable for 8 Lane PCIe did not got full answer, should be yes, but well no we dont have it tested and working in 8 lane configuration. The first chip available is SC25 in 378 package then SC25 in

484 and then if I am not mistaken SC80

Both LatticeSC and ECP2 devices are supporting multiply configuration loading from industry standard SPI serial flash.

ECP2 pricing is 50% of ECP, so smallest ECP2 has an pricetag of 3 USD. Smallest members of ECP2 family are however last on the roadmap the first member to be available is the largest ECP2-70 with smallest ones following.

Pricing rule: ECP2: 0.50$ per 1K LUT SC: 3.0 USD per 1K LUT

Nec === World smallest microcontroller was presented with a demo on credit card sized PCB, the IC is in 1.9mm by 2.2mm Chip Scale BGA package those requires less PCB area then MicroChip SOT23 micro what was smallest micro so far.

PLDA ==== Supreme technical knoweledge! Was really nice talk. They had PCIe demos for both Altera and Xilinx based boards. On my request they also did online live demo of working 8 lane PCIe solution using a Altera Stratix-II board with 2 PMC 4 lane PHYs. PLDA 8 lane solution has been integrated into customer products (also with 2 10GBe interfaces

- using PMC phy and Altera FPGA). A new 8 Lane board with Genesys PHYs and Xilinx Virtex4-LX will be available in June and is targetted to pass PCIe compliane at plugfest in July.

SiLabs ====== A girl handed me some invitation to "USB and Industrial Connectivity Seminar" At first I refused to take, it, but then asked what does it cost - 99EUR, well I still refused to take the leaflet and made a very pissef off face saying "I tried to purchase the Toolstick but wasnt able to get it". "Do you want one right now?" she asked me. "Yes". At the end she ended up taking it from the booth from behind the glass. And I did take the seminar ad as well, here are links to the seminars:

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at azzuri link there is picture of what you get free of charge at the seminar I list the items here (as it not clear from picture)

1) Bag and some books 2) ToolStick (value 10.99 USD) 3) USB FM Radio (no purchase possible) 4) C8051F340 Development kit (value 99$ USD) 5) CP2201 Evalution Kit, no info ??? what is it? there will be refreshments served.

Silica ====== They had 1 piece of Xilinx Spartan3e starterkit at the booth. It did blink some LED's. If Silica's stock is 1 piece it means that as of today they are not yet shipping. Well shipping should start any day form now I guess. Both my youngest have now a ass-sledge with Silica logo, hopefully there will be some snow around to check them out.

Simple Solutions ================

3 new Spartan3e based modules! All of them use parallel flash and multiboot feature. The 500e based modules are shipping now the 100e based module will be shipping very shortly.

TI ==

20 USD USB development tool for MSP430 Similar to SiLabs toolstick, but the 'target' module can be removed from the main part (TUSB3410 based)

TQC === Spartan3-1500 based module with MicroBlaze uClinux and MicroWindows demo

Vmetro ======

8 Lane PCIe protocol analyzer was advertized with 1 Lane version available at the booth

Xilinx ====== EDK 8.1SP1 has DDR2 support included and is targetted for release on FEB 20. For V4 MGT there was absolutly no commitment of anyavailability date at all.

To have a rest I did sit down for a live presentation. To my left an old guy with all-white hair possible having a rest as well, to my right was I think not a visitor. That was the audience. "Who has used PPC?" the speaker asked me for intro, I pulled a DIP40 form factor board with Virtex-4FX12 (see

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from my pocket as answer :) The presentation was about 'how to gain Ghz performance with the V4 APU'. I think I learned it:

300MHz multiplied by 17 is 5.4 GHz! That was the claim of the speaker. For sure it got 2 heads turning, I looked at the old man to the left and it was "What !?" on his face. Oh well I wasnt so good at simple math at scool. After that EDK was claimed to support PicoBlaze, what is not true. And it was also claimed that PicoBlaze can only be programmed with Assembler what of course is also not true. After that a comparison was done for pricing Virtex4-FX: 35 USD 2.4GHz pentium CPU: >100USD as a clear win for Xilinx. Hum at what qty does V4FX silicon cost 35 USD? And what does a cheapest 2.4GHz pentium class CPU cost at the same volume? Well that is something I do not know the answers.

After the presentation I looked around to see faces I know or products I dont know, but did not see any. Pitty.

Antti Lukats

PS my best gift item prize goes to perforce

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for a real balsa-wood model air-plane ! now having Andre (my 4 years old sun) as a pride owner

Reply to
Antti
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Antti schrieb:

Your 4 years old s_u_n must be a bright kid, isn't it?

SCNR ;-)

Regards Falk

Reply to
Falk Brunner

ROTFL - I ended up looking with google for SCNR :)

well, I hope Andre (will be 4 on 5 May this year) is bright, but its kinda hard to tell as he isnt talking so much, to the extent that makes us to worry already. 3 words sentences do come(in 2 languages), but thats about it. But he has its own view how to build things and has great joy in drawing and painting, and does teach his daddy how to make pann-cakes (this is no joke). As of that model airplane, well my wife helped me to get it together - the weights at the front fuselage had strip off glue for fixing (I assumed they are magnetic and can be used to adjust the balance what happened to be wrong assumption). Andre was just plaing with it afterwards and was close to be late into the kindergarten - the doors close there at 0900 sharp no exceptions.

Antti

Reply to
Antti

If he is being raised bilingually, it is perfectly normal to be a slow starter at speaking. The kid has to learn two different languages at the same time, and that takes a bit longer to sort out. If the two languages use very different sets of phononyms, it's even harder, as it also takes longer for the brain to train the ears. Another influence is if he is getting on with life fine without saying much, then there is less incentive to learn. It can all add up and make a great difference

- my first kid was extremely fast to learn to speak, while our second was almost worryingly slow.

Reply to
David Brown

Antti schrieb:

Look at his this way. Today, people (not only in TV) are talking (too) much, but they SAY often nothing at all. My parents said that I did not talk a word until the age of two, which worried my folks a little bit. But then, I spoke very clearly (they said). That said, you see a genius does'nt need too much words. ;-)

Yeah, since the kindertgarten is usully run be 100% women, its another proof that woman always want to educate (to drill ?) the kids, which is not bad at all, but sometimes annoying when they try to this with big kids (aka, grown up men, preferable husbands/boyfriends) ;-)

Regards Falk

Reply to
Falk Brunner

I was in Nuernberg today. Some more remarks: Atmel: The AT91SAM9260/1 look nice: Arm9, SDRAM interface, lots of peripherie (EMAC on 9260), small target volume pricing and the 9260 with QFP208 package still usefull for prototyping. Availability: "Soon" according to the people at the Atmel boot. Talking to some distributor, I mentioned my quote "Atmel has a long history of early announcements" and I was somehow confirmed in this opinion by the remark that Atmel anounces the chip, waits for some big design wins and then only really starts to produce the chip with availability for small customers.

Philips: The LPC3180 is another ARM 9 competitor. No availablity yet neither and only in a prototyp prohibiting FPBGA320. Probably other variants will come.

--
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------
Reply to
Uwe Bonnes

"Antti" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

some fixes updates to my onw posting

fix: ECP2-50 is first device, ECP2-12 follows with all members expected to be sampling in Q2

CP2201 is Ethernet MAC+PHY, packaged in QFN28, TQFP32

2 different parallel interfaces, will be officially launched on March 6th.
[snip]

if my commentary about Xilinx presentation has been qualified as funny in bad sense, well I have been a REAL PAIN IN THE ASS all my life at all presentations. The few small errors the Xilinx speaker did during the presentation, well we all do mistakes. And as I said I was never been good at simple math, and have done mistakes a la 1 + 1 = 2 in the math class, so the 3 x 17 error at the Xilinx presentation I should not have pushed onto it.

That I did not find anything new for me at the Xilinx booth that is also quite understandeable from simple reason that I already did know everything, and there was nothing that Xilinx announced specially at Embedded as some other companies did. It doesnt mean that I did not find nice Xilinx products at other booths the Zefant S3e modules are pretty cool, and PLDA had working

4 lane PCIe demo with FX60 to name a few.

Antti

Reply to
Antti Lukats

Just to update your story, regarding the LatticeSC. The SC25 is shipping now as we have a few samples for a board to be built early next month.

Reply to
Teo

This is now released, and on their web site. Interesting device, 5mm package, with a small amount (8K) of flash. Has (slowish) parallel bus, with Intel MUX'd option that opens into

256 registers, and the FIFOS/SRAM/FLASH are then accessed off that, with AutoINC modes on the streaming access.

Missing is a SPI port option - would have been a low cost option ?

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

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