Lpc2000

I'm looking at an "even swap" to possibly replace an Atmel AVR processor
with an LPC2106 on a product in prototype stage.  The AVR is out of gas
in several respects, and the '2106 looks like a possible project saver.
We figured out we were in trouble on Saturday; it's now the Monday
before Thanksgiving, and I am utterly unprepared.  In this context, I've
got a couple of fundamental questions that this group might answer
quickly..

1. Which Development/Evaluation boards have you used (i.e., Ashling,
Nohau, etc.), and how fast were you able to get an environment up and
running,

2. Which compiler (ARM, GNU, IAR, etc.) have you used, and how well did
they work,

3. How has your experience with Phillips been?  Last year, they
basically walked away from an entire portfolio of RF parts leaving a
bunch of customers with single-sourced EOL notices.  Are they in this
market for keeps, or for at least a couple of years?

Thanks for your patience.  Any thoughts are GREATLY appreciated.

On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 11:15:21AM -0500, James Dabbs wrote:

> 3. How has your experience with Phillips been?  Last year, they
> basically walked away from an entire portfolio of RF parts leaving a
> bunch of customers with single-sourced EOL notices.  Are they in this
> market for keeps, or for at least a couple of years?

Some years ago, they reduced their 8051 line; a bad surprise for many
customers... but it is a ARM7; similar devices from other manufactures should
be available soon (IMHO) (i hope pin to pin replacements, but I doubt ...).

        Matthias

At 11:15 AM 11/24/03 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm looking at an "even swap" to possibly replace an Atmel AVR processor
>with an LPC2106 on a product in prototype stage.  The AVR is out of gas
>in several respects, and the '2106 looks like a possible project saver.
>We figured out we were in trouble on Saturday; it's now the Monday
>before Thanksgiving, and I am utterly unprepared.  In this context, I've
>got a couple of fundamental questions that this group might answer
>quickly..

I've been working on a SIMMstick for the lp210x (I'm just about to send out 
for the production ready boards).


>1. Which Development/Evaluation boards have you used (i.e., Ashling,
>Nohau, etc.), and how fast were you able to get an environment up and
>running,

I bought the Nohau evaluation board (200 U$ AFAIR) mainly to use as a 
sanity check so that when I ran into issues I could check to see if it was 
my board or something in either the tools or my understanding.  I've using 
GCC and GDB with the McCraigor (sp?) Wiggler.  The biggest time to set up 
was getting the tools compiled and configured.  That part probably took 
about a week.  Some of that was my own stumbling around figuring out the 
process.  As far as the environment goes, I still want to spend a several 
days setting up make, lint and TLIB (revision control) for doing 
professional development but that's mostly because I'm starting a fresh 
setup here, I'd normally have them already mostly configured and I'd only 
have to set up the variances.

I'm building up the linker script (to define the registers) as I go along 
but that adds very little time to the process.  I'll share that when it's 
close to complete.

The GNU tools don't come with an IDE (unless you buy a packaged setup) but 
since I've never seen an IDE with a micro development system that didn't 
actively interfere with the development process so I don't see that as a 
drawback.  I'd far rather work with make and good standalone editor.

I haven't pushed the compiler yet so I don't know where its breaking point 
is but so far it's behaved itself.  The GDB/Wiggler combination is not 
quite a friendly.  McCraigor hasn't developed any support for the LPC210x 
yet and the generic arm support doesn't allow breakpoints in the 
flash.  One of the arm variants it supports might be able to do that but I 
haven't gone searching.  It looks as if Nohau's debugger/JTAG ICE supports 
this more completely but I've no experience with it myself.

If you are at all time limited I would definitely recommend getting one of 
the pre-built GNU setups (maybe from Microcross?), or one of the 
professional compilers.  I believe Nohau sells a development system that 
includes a GNU toolkit.  I went for the building path partly for the 
learning experience and partly I cheapened out.  Basically the choice is a 
time vs money one (and development time cost money too, unless your time is 
cheap you are probably far better off buying).

Programming is straightforward with the windows utility but definitely for 
development not production.  The specs are straightforward enough though so 
it doesn't look as if it would be too difficult to design what ever 
download utility was needed.


>2. Which compiler (ARM, GNU, IAR, etc.) have you used, and how well did
>they work,
>
>3. How has your experience with Phillips been?  Last year, they
>basically walked away from an entire portfolio of RF parts leaving a
>bunch of customers with single-sourced EOL notices.  Are they in this
>market for keeps, or for at least a couple of years?

This is not (unfortunately) unique to Philips.  All you can really do is 
make an educated guess as to the size of the market and the developers 
commitment to it.  After that "you pays your money and you takes your 
chances".  Given the apparent reaction to the chip and the number of 
variants they have already produced, things are looking up but not being 
privy to their boardroom talks.....

Robert Adsett

Hi there,

> >1. Which Development/Evaluation boards have you used (i.e., Ashling,
> >Nohau, etc.), and how fast were you able to get an environment up and
> >running,

I've been using the SeeHau (Nohau) system, and I find it quite good.
When debugging, and you do things with breakpoints etc. it _very_
intensively
provides comprehensive feedback on various issues, that really cuts down
the time getting familiar with it, but of course is of less importence once
you're
proficient with it.
Note that it comes bundled with the full uC/OS by Jean Labrosse, ported for
LPC2100, and that SeeHau is fully Kernel aware, able to display status of
the RTOS,
TID/TCB of tasks and their state, events, semaphores, maibox traffic, what's
where etc.
so you can also even single step the app with interrupts running in the
background.
(A bit harder at times of course)

> >2. Which compiler (ARM, GNU, IAR, etc.) have you used, and how well did
> >they work,
......
> professional compilers.  I believe Nohau sells a development system that
> includes a GNU toolkit.  I went for the building path partly for the
.....
The Nohau system uses the HI-Tech C compiler toolchain.
The issue mentioned not too long ago about HITide being slow maybe
should be clarified better :
The "slow" was actually referring to the MSP430 simulator, and JTAG.
I find it builds more than fast enough, even on my AMD750 w/ 512 Mb RAM.

> >3. How has your experience with Phillips been?  Last year, they
> >basically walked away from an entire portfolio of RF parts leaving a
> >bunch of customers with single-sourced EOL notices.  Are they in this
> >market for keeps, or for at least a couple of years?

I personally have little reservation in that regard.
The introduction of XA read in the databook :" 7 derivates / year" (1997)
It's 7 years later and there's bugger-all around.
But I agree too that being an ARM core, and having such a small package
despite MCU perfromance


Regarding the breakpoints w/ Flash on JTAG (gdb issue)

SeeHau supports 2 breakpoints in Flash, and to single step you need to run
from RAM.
I don't know where that will go.


We're certainly committing to LPC2100. I have been in the process of probing
my spectrum
analyzer on it to see how it behaves EMC wise. very important for me becuase
we want to use
it in RFBasic.

Best regards,
Kris
www.microbit.com.au

Hi All
 
1. Ashling offer a range of tools including pre-built GNU compiler, IDE,
Debugger with full flash debug/programming support, Eval board with
on-board JTAG I/F, Standalone USB based JTAG/ETM probes and range of
example programs with full source that demonstrate using LPC2xxx UARTs,
Timers, Interrupts/VIC etc.
 
2. See the below link for details. Check the FAQ as well.  
 
3. Any questions/queries feel free to contact me.
 
4. In my opinion, Philips are fully committed to the LPC2xxx and are in
it for the long haul. Witness the amount of LPC2xxx derivatives they
have already announced/released. Philips were (are) one of the most
successful 80C51 companies and they see this as the natural successor.
 



Hugh @ http://www.ashling.com/support/lpc2100/ 

-----Original Message-----
From: microbit [mailto:microbit@...] 
Sent: 25 November 2003 07:48
To: lpc2100@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [lpc2100] LPC210X Tooling and Opinions


Hi there,

> >1. Which Development/Evaluation boards have you used (i.e., Ashling,
> >Nohau, etc.), and how fast were you able to get an environment up and
> >running,

I've been using the SeeHau (Nohau) system, and I find it quite good.
When debugging, and you do things with breakpoints etc. it _very_
intensively
provides comprehensive feedback on various issues, that really cuts down
the time getting familiar with it, but of course is of less importence
once
you're
proficient with it.
Note that it comes bundled with the full uC/OS by Jean Labrosse, ported
for
LPC2100, and that SeeHau is fully Kernel aware, able to display status
of
the RTOS,
TID/TCB of tasks and their state, events, semaphores, maibox traffic,
what's
where etc.
so you can also even single step the app with interrupts running in the
background.
(A bit harder at times of course)

> >2. Which compiler (ARM, GNU, IAR, etc.) have you used, and how well
did
> >they work,
......
> professional compilers.  I believe Nohau sells a development system
that
> includes a GNU toolkit.  I went for the building path partly for the
.....
The Nohau system uses the HI-Tech C compiler toolchain.
The issue mentioned not too long ago about HITide being slow maybe
should be clarified better :
The "slow" was actually referring to the MSP430 simulator, and JTAG.
I find it builds more than fast enough, even on my AMD750 w/ 512 Mb RAM.

> >3. How has your experience with Phillips been?  Last year, they
> >basically walked away from an entire portfolio of RF parts leaving a
> >bunch of customers with single-sourced EOL notices.  Are they in this
> >market for keeps, or for at least a couple of years?

I personally have little reservation in that regard.
The introduction of XA read in the databook :" 7 derivates / year"
(1997)
It's 7 years later and there's bugger-all around.
But I agree too that being an ARM core, and having such a small package
despite MCU perfromance


Regarding the breakpoints w/ Flash on JTAG (gdb issue)

SeeHau supports 2 breakpoints in Flash, and to single step you need to
run
from RAM.
I don't know where that will go.


We're certainly committing to LPC2100. I have been in the process of
probing
my spectrum
analyzer on it to see how it behaves EMC wise. very important for me
becuase
we want to use
it in RFBasic.

Best regards,
Kris
www.microbit.com.au



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----- Original Message ----- 

From: "microbit" <microbit@...>
To: <lpc2100@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2003 7:47 AM
Subject: Re: [lpc2100] LPC210X Tooling and Opinions


> Hi there,
>
> > >1. Which Development/Evaluation boards have you used (i.e., Ashling,
> > >Nohau, etc.), and how fast were you able to get an environment up and
> > >running,

I got my own board working immediately (usual flashing LEDs) with the latest
beta release of the Rowley Associates software, which includes Philips ARM
support. Their software also works straight off with the Nohau board.

Leon
--
Leon Heller, G1HSM
Email: aqzf13@...
http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller

Thanks for all of the leads on tooling for this part.  This info was
extremely helpful and timely..

On a related note, I've got another question that is very difficult to
get answered going into a holiday here in the US..

What is the piece cost of the LPC2106, in round budgetary numbers?

Thanks again!

--- In lpc2100@yahoogroups.com, "James Dabbs" <jdabbs@t...> wrote:
> Thanks for all of the leads on tooling for this part.  This info was
> extremely helpful and timely..
> 
> On a related note, I've got another question that is very difficult 
to
> get answered going into a holiday here in the US..
> 
> What is the piece cost of the LPC2106, in round budgetary numbers?
> 
> Thanks again!

The budgetary price of the LPC2106BBD48 is $7 for 10 Kpcs.

--- In lpc2100@yahoogroups.com, "James Dabbs" <jdabbs@t...> wrote:
> Thanks for all of the leads on tooling for this part.  This info was
> extremely helpful and timely..
> 
> On a related note, I've got another question that is very difficult to
> get answered going into a holiday here in the US..
> 
> What is the piece cost of the LPC2106, in round budgetary numbers?


I've just received 20 pcs from Avnet/Silica (UK) for 7.75 GBP each.

Leon

Have you tried findchips?  I use them a lot for preliminary budgetary pricing.

http://www.findchips.com/

For parts that don't show up there I then start querying distributors like 
Arrow that don't show up in findchips list.

Robert

" 'Freedom' has no meaning of itself.  There are always restrictions,
be they legal, genetic, or physical.  If you don't believe me, try to
chew a radio signal. "

                         Kelvin Throop, III

James, 
 
    Pricing on the part for small quantities is slightly less than $8.00.  
 
playwude@...

James Dabbs <jdabbs@...> wrote:
Thanks for all of the leads on tooling for this part. This info was
extremely helpful and timely..

On a related note, I've got another question that is very difficult to
get answered going into a holiday here in the US..

What is the piece cost of the LPC2106, in round budgetary numbers?

Thanks again!



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lpc2100-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com



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