TinyARM controller

Sep 17, 2004 7 Replies

The TinyARM controllers

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have caught my eye and I'm curious if anyone has used them and how they compare with other alternatives like AVRs, PICs, Ubicom, (HC16?). Imagecraft says they're about to release a compiler for them.



Mitch Berkson


I don't know myself. I much prefer to use the TiniARMT boards from

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NewMicros' TiniARMT works great and they have excellent support for it too. They have GNU GCC, MPE Forth, Eclipse for it as well. I don't work for them but I am a happy customer.

I was asking about ARM in general. The New Micros board looks nice especially if Eclipse works. Thanks.

Mitch Berkson

The NewMicros board can be bought now and shipped right away. They have been out for a while now too. Those boards you mentioned above aren't even out yet. Plus you have little or no support on trying to get the boards to do something. getting GNU GCC to work is a real trick if you have no support. I haven't tried Eclipse, I use MPE Forth myself, but since GnuGCC works too, I have no doubt that Eclipse works on it as well.

So when would you use ARM vs. the Isopod?

Mitch Berkson

Lots of boards for the philips and other arm7 chips

For gcc for arm

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philips chips
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the smaller chips are the lpc21xx

For the philips lpc2000 chips there is a yahoo group

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Few other links
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For an ide can use ecilpse get cdt plugin java based and a bit slow

commerical compilers and boards commerical compilers aren't cheap usually

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For cheap boards
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other manufactures of arm7 chips include analog devices
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amoung many others

Alex Gibson

It depends on what I am using it for. The ISPOD is a fantastic DSP, runs at 80mhz, has jillions of features. it's a super high performance screamer, but it sucks a lot of power to do all of that. The ARM on the other hand is a great MCU, but doesn't have that blistering performance, nor does it suck all that power. I prefer the ISOPOD, but if power consumption is an issue and performance isn't, then the ARM would be a excellent choice. The ISOPOD -- ISOMAX system sort of grows on you after a while, it's really nice. The ARM CPU's have been inexoriably getting used in all sorts of things, so the little Phillips ARM MCU is a good choice for those already comfortable with ARM or wanting to get into ARM's without having to go to a full blown development system and expensive commericial compilers.

I think it is a bit of apple/oranges here too.

An IsoPod is a timing beast. lots of time based I/O, and a lot of reasonably good a/d. It is based on a motor control specific IC with a good language built onto the chip.

The TiniArm is a bit different. Lots of storage, good on processing power. Good on power consumption, less timer specific stuff.

As far as features to features, the closest match would be a tinipod vs an tiniarm If you wanted Canbus, go Tinipod, If you want I2C go Tini Arm.

Mike

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