AVR AT327000

www.atmel.com

Dan N posted:

"I've been shown a new dev kit for the AVR AT327000 that uses embedded
linux and I wanted to get advice and opinions on this processor.  I'm not
familiar with AVR processors at all."

I am not familiar with the AT327000 and I found no mention of it on
Atmel's website so perhaps you intended to type something like
AT32AP7000. N.B. AVR32 processors (which seem to be what you are
thinking of) should not be confused with AVR (8 bit) processors: thank
Atmel for the confusion.

"I'd like to use the GCC compiler.  Is this well supported?"

GCC is fairly well supported for AVR (if you use the patches in the
FreeBSD ports, the GCC steering committee does not care about AVRs and
has let patches wait for over a year) but it is flawed. I do not know
whether AVR32 is supported.

"Does anyone know who's done the Linux port and is it well supported?

[..]"

I do not know.

"I've found avrfreaks.net, any other good sites?"

HTTP://Lists.GNU.org/pipermail/avr-gcc-list

I have not used GCC on the AVR32 AP7000 but have on the AVR32 UC3A - which
is its little brother.    See here:  http://www.freertos.org/portAVR32.html
There is a basic WEB server running that uses lwIP on top of FreeRTOS.org.
I did not come across any problems or issues with any of the AVR32 GCC
toolchain - but have not tried using it with the AVR32 Studio software, just
command line.



As far as I know (please somebody correct me otherwise) it was done by Atmel
themselves.  They use Linux for the AP7000 and FreeRTOS.org for the UC3A as
their own open source offerings.



Depends completely on what you want to do with it.  Nobody can offer an
opinion without more information on the requirements of your application.




There may be other sites around, but AVRFreaks is the dogs, so why go
anywhere else?

First of all, the kit contains an AVR32, not an AVR and they
cannot use the same compilers.



gcc-4.0.4 exists and a later version is in the works.
Atmel Norway is doing the gcc port and will support end customers.
The gcc patches for AVR32 is still waiting to be merged with mainstream gcc.



The AT32AP7000 chip uses more or less the same peripherals as the ARM based
AT91 series
so many drivers are common, the AVR32 Linux port was built for linux 2.6
while many drivers for the AT91 were for linux 2.4 at that stage.
A joint effort has resulted in most things merged into the current
mainstream kernel (linux-2.6.21.1)



You can use IAR Embedded Workbench for AVR32 if you want a nice build
environment.
Atmel is working on an Eclipse based environment (AVR32 Studio) and there is
a betasite
available (talk to your local Atmel contact)
You can connect the JTAGICE Mk II emulator



    avr32linux.org

Ulf how can we get avr32 gcc for other os's like OS X ?

Just after the tools not an ide.

Avr gcc is easily available both binaries and source.

Any plans to make the sources available so they can be built
for other systems ?

Alex

... snip ...


Under GPL, those sources should all be available.

Being GCC, the source is available:
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/tools_card.asp?tool_id41%18

You're probably talking about the NGW100 kit from Atmel.
It has an AVR32 processor, an MMC slot, two Ethernet
interfaces, and a USB client interface.  They're $70
from Digi-Key.


Don't know.

avrfreaks is the main site along with atmel's.  I've
tried using "buildroot" to build an root filesystem
but haven't had any luck with it.

Bob

Thanks to everyone for your replies.

Dan