Hi Steve, Sebastastien
Good comments. Yeah KiCad is OK, but when I am trying to get the signal
delay of 50 traces to a target, Kicad just doesnt have the ease of use
for those sort of operations, compared with say, xSignals in Altium.
The integer based DSP blocks on the FPGAs have long words, so its not
all hard. NEON on the hybrid FPGA/CPU can assist alot with FP grunt.
And you can program slabs of th FPGA now in C++ (Vivado HLS) .
I do not agree with your argument that the option is integer FPGA
versus FP CPU:
It is FP CPU + integer FPGA. The rule is- ONLY put things in the FPGA
that absolutely MUST go there. (because it is hard work) .
Vivado FPGA tools for Xilinx are free. Up to at least a $700 FPGA size.
And the simulator is good and free also , again up to a specific size.
If you want to stay in the reasonable fast mini processor domain, the
new STM32ST series (Cortex A7 and NEON) is a pretty capable option. I
guess if you want want to stay without the need for external memory,
desirable I know, the cortex M7 is a good option.
You are never going to put LPCnet on an CortexM7... there is a factor of
about 25x behind even with the fastest M7.
I dont think algorithms should be limited in capability because ideology
says we must use simple hardware and software.
You already using complexity- it is in the software ! Just like state
machines versus use of for-next-if-then-else constructs, you always had
a state machine, but the state was held in all the variables, not a
single state variable.
g :-)
On 25/07/2020 3:05 am, Steve wrote:
On Fri, Jul 24, 2020 at 8:33 AM Sebastien F4GRX <[email protected]> wrote:
The problem with the need for power is that imho codec2 has become too heavy to
run on simple platforms.
I think the fast FP technology is standard now on $5 USD CPU's (simple
platforms). Most of the integer only designs are for use much closer
to the hardware. I'm even seeing fast double precision FP in cheap
CPU's.
The new argument, I think, is integer based FPGA versus floating point
CPU, or more specifically parallel versus serial. The problem is, who
wants to program FPGA or CPU's in machine language? Life is too short.
Is Open Source defined by the cost of the tools or the documentation
to duplicate?
For example, I had to invest in a Discovery board in order to play
with the Open Source code. Extrapolate from that :-)
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CORTEX RF
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