Shane, (and David and Chris)
My remark was not specific about codec2. It was more a generic remark concerning soc with different types of processors in them (like the OMAP or AM335x).
I'm just interested to know how exactly programming such a devices is done. I do not have an application which would actually need this kind of processor. As you said, a dual core cortex A9 is probably much more then most ham-applications would need.
73 Kristoff - ON1ARF On 25-04-13 19:26, Shane Burrell wrote:
The OMAP is not a great platform to use for the volumes of units that might make it into the ham world. I don't think the integrated DSP is needed when you have several hundred mhz arm and fpu anyways. At least from what I see and what I've been working on the idea is to come up with something that might be MIC sized or at least a small box, possibly battery powered. For that to happen I would suggest a small MCU with good DSP lib and FPU. I've focused on the STM32F4 so far because it seems to fit the bill nicely. If you really want to use a full blown linux system I don't think you'll find anything out there better than the TI supported OMAP and sitara boards. The new beaglebone black is expensive, powerful and you likely won't need a dedicated DSP onboard to several codec2 streams. With that being said I still come back to those of us that want a module or something that is purpose built like codec2 on the STM32F4.On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 1:14 PM, David Witten <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:Kristoff, It seems to me that the OMAP series chips with Floating Point (C6/C7) DSPs would be ideal for HAM purposes, but:... 1. To the best of my knowledge, you *must* use TI's CCS development tools to access the DSP functionality, and follow fairly complex rules for coordinating data transfer and resource management between the DSP and CPU('s). Though some of these tools are based on GNU gcc/g++, some (and especially library code) are not. This seems to take a coder out of the Open Source world pretty quickly. 2. Talking to TI support people for another project seems to indicate that all of the OMAP products (except perhaps the OMAP-L137/138) are considered 'High Volume Customer' products, and support is only provided to customers purchasing $1M+ volumes. The following is from a note I sent to a client some time back: "As I have feared, TI's future plans continue to de-emphasize their ARM+DSP products. Monday I attempted to speak with their telephone support and was told that most of the OMAP processors are no longer considered general market products and are only supported for 'very large volume customers', meaning ones who purchase in multiple 100K+ volumes. They were very nice about it. They just did not have support personnel who were up to date on these products." "It seems that the number of customers who have need of DSP functionality beyond that bundled in the pre-programmed floating point, video acceleration, audio and video decoding, etc. is vanishingly small. And with the processing power of the multiple general-purpose cores in these chips, specialized programmable DSP functionality no longer rates a core of its own." "I have seen a steady decrease in the information available on the DSP portion of these platforms with each successive family. With the OMAP 55XX series it is scarcely mentioned at all." "The one exception to this is the OMAP-L137/138 Integra DSP+ARM packages. They are supported, and supposedly will continue to be. Up to date, relevant (audio processing) examples are available. See: http://www.ti.com/product/omap-l138 I believe that the OMAP-L138 has a tightly coupled C674x DSP running at 456 MHz coupled to an ARM-9 CPU, Also running at 456MHz. Much like the OMAP 3530 in the Beagle XM. This would seem to be more than powerful enough for your purposes." "A development system for this chip is shown here: http://www.mitydsp.com/products-services/cpu-engines/mitydsp-l138/"; This may or may not be correct, but it is my impression The tools are there, and so is the documentation. But expect a really tough go tracking them all down and keeping them up to date. The situation is similar or possibly worse with other vendors of this class of products. I have stuff for Samsung, Marvell, Freescale, etc. If you are not Apple, you can buy them, but don't ask any dumb questions. Dave Witten, KD0EAG ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:22:10 +0200 From: Kristoff Bonne <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [Freetel-codec2] Codec2 for uC or DSP To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Bruce, On 23-04-13 22:05, Bruce Perens wrote: > On 4/23/2013 12:54 PM, Curt, WE7U wrote: >> On Thu, 18 Apr 2013, Kristoff Bonne wrote: >> >> Now there's a BeagleBone for $45 too. I haven't looked at the specs to see whether it has floating point, but maybe another possibility? >> >> 1GHz Cortex-A8, 2GB on-board flash, microSD, microHDMI, ethernet, $45: >> >> http://goo.gl/SsqE6 > It's a Sitara, related to the one in our AM335x starter kit which we'll > be showing at Dayton, except that the starter kit has a touchscreen, > bluetooth, and wifi. I think the BeagleBone Black has 4 processors on > chip: a Cortex A8 (which I think does have floating point), C7 DSP (OK > if you want to invest the time), two PRUs. A PRU is very simple scalar > in-order 32 bit processor with 4K program RAM and the ability to access > all of the on-chip peripherals and to share a pair of mailbox registers > and some RAM with the main processor. It does the real-time and > sleep-mode jobs more efficiently than the main processor. This kind-of makes me think of TI's OMAP soc devices that have one (or more) cortex-A CPUs + an additional cortex-M for "slow stuff". Just wondering, will it actually be able to access these additional processors? I have a pandaboard which is OMAP4430 based. That chip also has an additional DSP core and a GPU. However, I never really found a good document that describes how to actually use the. I read that the DSP core had to be addresses via some special API, that was about it. So, will we be able to use these additional cores? I would be interested to know how coding this kind of enviroment really is done. 73 Kristoff - ON1ARF ------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Try New Relic Now & We'll Send You this Cool Shirt New Relic is the only SaaS-based application performance monitoring service that delivers powerful full stack analytics. Optimize and monitor your browser, app, & servers with just a few lines of code. 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