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Microprocessor

Hi,

I need to use a microprocessor for an application but I have only ever used microcontrollers in the past so I'm a little unsure about the whole microproccessor thing.

I need to take some serial data, perform some maths on it, then put the new data out in serial form. The maths that needs to be done invovles exponentials to the power of 6, sin functions, sin^5 etc. The processor needs to go into a unit that will be hand held where current drain is an issue. Something that can be programmed in C would be great.

Anyone got any pointers or tips regarding which family of microprocessor would be suitable to use. Or something to get started on?

Cheers,

Reply to
mb.lancs
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On 1 Oct 2005 05:05:17 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wroth:

I would use a Palm OS based PDA as a development platform. Many use ARM processors, have serial I/O, and run on batteries. There is quite a bit of cheap help available for development on those PDA's.

Once the software is debugged, you can easily embed the required hardware into your system.

Jim

Reply to
jmeyer

What do you mean when you say "microcontroller" and what kind of speed do you need to achieve?

What you describe could easily be done with an 8051, or any other 8-bit microcontroller given sufficient time and enough program memory -- you could probably even keep it to 256 bytes of RAM if you didn't try for an OS.

Without further detail you need something from 8 to 64 bits, that will consume between 0.01 and 1000 watts of power, with between 128 and

128000 bytes of RAM, etc., etc., etc. 
--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply to
Tim Wescott

schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...

Well,

Guess you made the math thing insufficient clear. How many numbers at a time are we talking about? Three? Ten? Hundred? What is the data type? Byte? Int(2 bytes). Long or longer? Float? What accuracy do you need? What time is available? ms? s? hours?

The principles are wellknown. The old micros did this kind of things already. The ZX81 for instance, used five bytes floating point math including the things your talking about. Microchip offers a -free- floating point math library including the functions you need... for 24 or 32 bits. If that package suit your needs, you only have to get a PIC with an onboard UART and do a little programming yourself. (Examples: PIC16F628, PIC16F873 and PIC16F876.) Otherwise...

petrus bitbyter

Reply to
petrus bitbyter

Sounds like you want to stick to a microcontroller. Depending on RAM and size of program, you might get away with an MSP430 (up to 60K flash, 2k RAM), or Zilog eZ80 flash parts (128k flash, 8k RAM), both creditably low power, especially in standby, both with serial ports and good C compiler support.

Paul Burke

Reply to
Paul Burke

Yeah. Go reread the textbook.

Good Luck! Rich

Reply to
Rich, Under the Affluence

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