TMS470

Have you looked at CrossWorks?

--
Regards,
Richard.

+ http://www.FreeRTOS.org
A free Real Time Kernel for 8, 16 and 32bit systems.

+ http://www.SafeRTOS.com
An IEC 61508 compliant real time kernel for safety related systems.

Didn't even know they existed. It looks interesting on first inspection.

Thanks,

-M

They support the TMS470? It doesn't seem to be listed anywhere on the web site.

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  A GRAM?? A BRAM... A
                                  at               GROOM... A BROOM... Oh,
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Here is a link to a support package:

-- Regards, Richard.

• formatting link
  A free real time kernel for 8, 16 and 32bit systems.

• formatting link
  An IEC 61508 compliant real time kernel for safety related systems.

Un bel giorno m digitò:

TMS470 is basically a beefed-up ARM7. If you prefer spending money on internal development instead of buying commercial stuff, maybe the porting of the Linux kernel for this architecture could be an option. ARM7TDMI is supported out of the box, you "just" need to write/adapt the drivers for the peripherals you are going to use.

--
emboliaschizoide.splinder.com

Doh! I should have found that.

-- Grant Edwards grante Yow! Hello. Just walk at along and try NOT to think visi.com about your INTESTINES being almost FORTY YARDS LONG!!

Gcc and eCos/freeRTOS/XMK/uCLinux?

They're all free.

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  This is a NO-FRILLS
                                  at               flight -- hold th' CANADIAN
                               visi.com            BACON!!

Grant - are any of the compilers & os's you mention covered by licenses other than the GPL/GNU types?

Hul

Grant Edwards wrote:

GCC is certainly covered by GPL/GNU. The rest are run-times using GCC. What's wrong with GPL/GNU licenses?

As was recently mentioned in another thread, freeRTOS is available under a commercial license. I don't remember what XMK's licensing is like. eCos is available under a modified GPL that doesn't require you to distribute source code.

GCC is only available under GPL, but that would only be a concern if you're planning on distributing binaries of the compiler itself.

--
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I am covered with
                                  at               pure vegetable oil and I am
                               visi.com            writing a best seller!

If you don't want to use GCC: use TI's own suite, Code Composer Studio, now at version 3.3. The Platinum edition for all processors including TMS470 and all (most?) DSPs is about 3K. Is is not unconditionally stable, but quite workable. You can get a free 120-day evaluation version of CCS3.3.

Adding JTAG (a.o. Spectrum Digital) might set you back an extra $600...1500 but then you have a professional system with good debugging.

Regards, Arie de Muijnck

The GPL/GNU licenses are "anti-copyright" copyrights in that the legal mechanism of copyright is used to require licenseces (sp?) to make their work public and publicly available.

For personal use that's probably not a concern but in a comercial context it's potentially a disaster. Having a competitor sue for a copy of software that was a year or two or three in development is an unsupportable risk.

Hul

On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:45:16 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@kbrx.com wrote in comp.arch.embedded:

How familiar are you with the GPL? It does not require the distribution of any source code that you develop that merely uses the compiler's library and the operating system's APIs.

--
Jack Klein
Home: http://JK-Technology.Com
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Martin, if you want to go for internal memory you do not want to think about Linux (probably you know that). You did mention an OS though. Possible combinations you did not mention yet fitting your budget. Rowley compiler / debugger. It is a GNU compiler but a good debugger comes with it. Use it with J-Link from Segger

if you have more time for debugging you probably have to use GDB. You could use a GNU compiler and a debugger that comes with a JTAG emulator such as Signum. There are solutions from Hitex, Lauterbach, Ashling, iSystems ... and many more that have the focus on the emulator.

For your OS, that is a little tricky. The Keil RTL (real Time Library) or embOS from Segger or Powerpack from IAR or uc-OSII all have similar deals and all using up your complete budget. It is going to be a compromise between your time to develop the application and your money to get "some" tools or better tools.

The biggest benefit of going with one vendor, e.g. the 10k solution you mentioned, is unified support, not having to call different people telling you it is "the other guys" problem.

Robert

Right. I also don't want to make a research project out of this. I have six weeks to delivery a nominally functional product.

The OS needs are relatively minimal. We've implemented most of what we needed using a simple 1ms interrupt-driven scheduler so far. But, it'd be nince to work with (and benefit from) a real RTOS.

We'll need to implement ethernet, USB host and peripheral ports, RS232, I2C, SPI and a number of parallel I/O pins. The current implementation uses a grossly overloaded '8051 derivative from Silicon Labs. This is one of those products where the feature set grew past the original design intent. The '8051 is inadequate for the task. Memory is a huge problem. We now need to implement a web server for over-the-network command and control as well as the host USB control. I like '8051's but this is getting ridiculous. The processor choice started to get in the way of us being able to implement new functionality.

And, so, looking around, I thought that the TI offering might be a good idea. Lots of FLASH, a decent amount of RAM and more that can be had externally. We already work with Keil, so, it all seemed like a reasonable idea...until the bean-counting part of this exercise came into the fold. The problem is that the pricing model is set based on the old '8051 design. You know where this went, right?

The '470 is significantly more complex to implement (lots more choices to be made) but it seems like a good long term decision. I just saw a very interesting chip from NXP (the LPC24xx series). More of the peripherals that we need in one chip. It might be a better choice than the TI yet.

In the long term it is begining to look like we might have to spring for a $10K-ish solution and simply find more projects to amortize it over.

-Martin

What is your estimated target Flash size? Keil is free for 16K and IAR is free for 32K. We are currently using about 10K, so no money problem yet (but you never know). We are also planning on placing some callable functions on high flash (64K for us), so we can in theory implement the design with completely free tools.

Take care over the Keil limits. 16K limit is for Flash + Ram usage, whereas IAR is Flash only.

-- Regards, Richard.

• formatting link
  A free real time kernel for 8, 16 and 32bit systems.

• formatting link
  An IEC 61508 compliant real time kernel for safety related systems.

Jack Klein wrote: : On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:45:16 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@kbrx.com wrote in : comp.arch.embedded: : :> The GPL/GNU licenses are "anti-copyright" copyrights in that the legal :> mechanism of copyright is used to require licenseces (sp?) to make their :> work public and publicly available. :> :> For personal use that's probably not a concern but in a comercial context :> it's potentially a disaster. Having a competitor sue for a copy of :> software that was a year or two or three in development is an :> unsupportable risk. : : How familiar are you with the GPL? It does not require the : distribution of any source code that you develop that merely uses the : compiler's library and the operating system's APIs.

Jack - I read the/a GNU license numerous years ago which required distributing source and a part of a recent GPL license which does the same. The first difficulty, though, is the agreement's length - 5 pages requires careful reading by someone versed in the intracasies of copyright law.

Below is the section of the GPL license where I stopped reading.

Hul

/* start of section of GPL license */ 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) /* end of section of GPL license */

Martin,

The LPC2468 would include the USB Host, device ,OTG, also Ethernet and

2 CAN channels that you might not use. Currently this device is in early production phase. It would be a perfect fit for what you are looking for but if you need devices before mid Q2, that is going to be a challenge and I understodd you were talking about 6 weeks!?

Also keep in mind that the small (and big) OSs charge extra for USB stacks. Only very few offer a host stack at this time at all. Most of the host stacks are for external USB devices such as ISP13xx from NXP.

In a nutshell, the NXP LPC2468 seems quite a bit better than the TMS470 but it is very early to use it because there is no stock at any distributor. There is a board from

though.

Robert