hi,
Heres a completely novel question : which ARM9 chip ? ;)
Ok, just kidding. What i am really looking for is a bit of advice amongst my fairly limited choices.
First, i need a chip for an application, that is as integrated as possible ( who doesnt ? ) and the app needs Ethernet, ARM9 > 100mhz ( i really wish i could run on ARM7 but i cant ) and an LCD. Seems like an easy task, but after days of digging on the net i am still not sure on purchase desicions. The SOC chips that i have come up with are: Cirrus EP9307 ( thats EP9315 sans IDE & PCMCIA ), has ethernet, LCD Sharp LH7A404, also ethernet, LCD. For some reason the chip is like $10 more expensive. why ? Samsung S3C2440X is a good candidate, but no Eth MAC on chip. And of course Atmel AT91RM9200, but no LCD on chip. Cant have them all, canyou ?
The EP9307 devkits are really hard to come by, most vendors have EP9315. I guess, for development it doesnt matter as long as i dont use any of the extra features. Unfortunately, popular free RTOSes like eCos and RTEMS dont support it out of the box, and i really would like a small footprint. I didnt notice any common commercial RTOS support it either. LH7A4xx is a puzzle. Why is it so much more expensive ? S3C looks like a real good chip, plenty of different dev hardware and OS software to choose from, but lack of on chip ethernet. And, AT91 series. Again, very widely available, popular chip. No integrated LCD i/f.
Where would one get the EP9307/15 devkit from, that has reasonable support ?
Also, what dev tool suite ? I have RealView compilers and debuggers available, also ICD. Have access to lauterbach, and of course full range of GNU based tools. Some RTOS vendors seem to be really tied to IAR, is it worth it over RealView ?
anything you can comment on, chime in please. thanks in advance,
-kert