The new "Stellaris 9000 series":http://www.luminarymicro.com/products/9000_series.html by "Luminary":http://www.luminarymicro.com is based on the ARM Cortex-M3 and offers up to 96 kB RAM and 100 MHz clock speed. New features include I2S (for audio CODECs) and an external peripheral interface that supports SDRAM and a host mode.
Hello Andreas, can you give any comments on the tools provided with Luminary Eval-Kits or are there any other tool chains available (say e.g. gcc). Code Red Technologies Tools (Board locked) CodeSourcery Tools (some kind of a trial version) IAR Tools (32k codesize) ARM/Keil Tools (16k codesize) Best regards
You can use any GCC toolchain that supports the Thumb-2 instruction set. From the toolchain packages listed on http://embdev.net/topic/129986 at least devkitPro and CodeSourcery (Lite is free) support it. If you can live with the 32k/16k limits, go for IAR/Keil, they both come with good IDEs that are easier to get started with than the GCC packages.
If you want a cheap development environment with no limitations you should go with CrossWorks for ARM. Interesting controllers, comparable to SAM7 series of atmel (just with another core, more IOs, memory interface etc). Would make a good controller for an MP3 player.
That's what I thought, too. But you would have to rewrite the assembly portion of the MP3 decoder for Thumb-2.
Well, there is a solution for the MP3 approach. The STM32 Primer2 comes with an MP3 player implemented, this time however tied to the Raisonance tools, which are great for the STM32 but not available (yet?) for Luminary. btw. I would agree that the old Stellaris running at 50 MHz were comparable to the SAM7 series from Atmel but the new ones running at 100 MHz and providing an improved core together with better peripherals that is a little bit like claiming the VW Golf and the BMW 7 series are comparable, both are cars, both offer 4 doors... guess you know what I am getting at. The new Stellaris joins the NXP1700 in the 100 MHz Cortex-M3 performance level, the STM32 is sort of close but right now not there. On the other hand, the STM32 is real, can be purchased through distribution, the Stellaris and the LPC1700 are real in the lab of Luminary and NXP but can not be purchased yet by you and me on the open market. Just my 2 cents, Robert
Andreas Schwarz wrote: > That's what I thought, too. But you would have to rewrite the assembly > portion of the MP3 decoder for Thumb-2. Sure, but that is not really difficult. The first step would involve a simple recompilation of the existing assembler source. It is quite likely that this is sufficient. Second (optional) step would be fine tuning it to improve efficiency on a Thumb-2 target. All modern ARM tool chains support UAL (Unified Assembler Language). E.g if you have an ARM assembler source using conditional execution:
1 | CMP r0, #15 |
2 | MOVGT r0, #15 |
3 | MOVLE r0, #0 |
The code will be translated to this
1 | CMP r0, #15 |
2 | ITE GT |
3 | MOVGT r0, #15 |
4 | MOVLE r0, #0 |
, if the target is Thumb-2. I was able to write non-trivial code just once for ARM and Thumb-2 targets. Great for benchmarking :-) Regards Marcus http://www.doulos.com/arm/
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