| ??? 11/30/10 11:02 Read: times Msg Score: +2 +1 Good Answer/Helpful +1 Informative |
#179741 - Definitely too large span of ARM chips Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Andy said:
My point is that simply talking of "ARMs" is a very sweeping generalisation - the expertise at this forum is, I think, more concentrated at the Cortex-M3/0 and lower ARM7 end of the spectrum...?
(and the "low-level" aspects of bigger applications). That is my belief too. ARM processors for $1 are used in very small embedded devices, while there are ARM systems with gbit switches or high-end-graphics or full system-on-a-chip integrated. I don't think too many of the current readers of this forum are thinking about embedded systems similar in performance to Pentium class machines, with a gigabyte of RAM, GHz+ clock frequency, multiple cores, 3D acceleration, ... But many of the concepts in use with 8051 chips are applicable to the lower-end ARM systems too, even if the ARM may be 32-bit (with 16 or 32-bit instruction set). And while the PC-class systems are normally based on reference designs from the chip manufacturers, the Cortex and ARM7 systems are normally designed in the same way as traditional 8051 systems. So main focus is on things like: how to protect inputs. How to drive different outputs. What signals to route to what pins to get the hw acceleration from capture, pwm, SPI, I2C, ... That is why this forum is (while it still has enough people online) a quite good fit for discussing ARM7 and lower-end Cortex processor solutions. With the high-end ARM cores, you basically visit the manufacturer forums while trying to get the Linux drivers up and working. Then you switch to generic Linux forums and basically see your system as a "Linux computer". No matter that it isn't PC-compatible. |
