4 ms·

So it does in 2012 what the Parallax Propeller did in 2006. Will the wonders ever cease?

by spiritplumber 14y ago

meaty 14y ago
Yes and what we could do in an FPGA in 1998...
- spiritplumber 14y ago
  True, but FPGAs are harder to code for, and more expensive. I work with both platforms and find them about as easy to code on, with the Prop costing a little less but requiring external parts to do ADC/DAC.
  - blackguardx 14y ago
    FPGAs have gotten pretty cheap nowadays. They also aren't that difficult to program if you know Verilog.
    - yzhou 14y ago
      we have made a A3P250 FPGA board, with build-in USB interface, total cost of building the board is less than $50, can do a ton of things MCU can not do. would anyone want it if we commercialize it? http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0117/1482/products/IMG_0305_1024x1024.jpg?384 http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0117/1482/products/IMG_0305... The design was based on http://skywired.net/blog/projects/a3pn250-fpga-breakout-board/ http://skywired.net/blog/projects/a3pn250-fpga-breakout-boar..., added regulator chips, got rid of the power-on-reset chips.
      - wisty 14y ago
        If you're not sure, you could start a Kickstarter. That's what it's for - products which are only viable if a certain number of people put down cash.
      - dmboyd 14y ago
        How does the actel toolkit compare with the xilinx toolkit?
revelation 14y ago
The value in the Arduino is not necessarily in the actual processor, but in the tools, documentation, tutorials and library supplied with the boards. And of course in its large community of users and addons ('shields').
- nnnnni 14y ago
  Plus the whole "open source hardware" thing...
Sanddancer 14y ago
It does a hell of a lot more than what the propeller can. The chip they use has on-board ADCs and DACs, which makes it a lot easier to interface with analog signals out of the box. It also has a lot more RAM, DMA access so you don't need to use CPU clocks to pull things in and out of memory, support for pretty much any bus you need -- on-board USB slave and host, SPI, I2C, CAN, etc -- for talking to anything in the world. The Propeller was an interesting chip 6 years ago, but the world's more than caught up and surpassed it, with its only saving grace being that it's a cheap multicore chip, but even then, the XMOS chips are far more interesting there.

So it does in 2012 what the Parallax Propeller did in 2006. Will the wonders ever cease?

meaty 14y ago

Yes and what we could do in an FPGA in 1998...

spiritplumber 14y ago
True, but FPGAs are harder to code for, and more expensive. I work with both platforms and find them about as easy to code on, with the Prop costing a little less but requiring external parts to do ADC/DAC.
- blackguardx 14y ago
  FPGAs have gotten pretty cheap nowadays. They also aren't that difficult to program if you know Verilog.
  - yzhou 14y ago
    we have made a A3P250 FPGA board, with build-in USB interface, total cost of building the board is less than $50, can do a ton of things MCU can not do. would anyone want it if we commercialize it? http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0117/1482/products/IMG_0305_1024x1024.jpg?384 http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0117/1482/products/IMG_0305... The design was based on http://skywired.net/blog/projects/a3pn250-fpga-breakout-board/ http://skywired.net/blog/projects/a3pn250-fpga-breakout-boar..., added regulator chips, got rid of the power-on-reset chips.
    - wisty 14y ago
      If you're not sure, you could start a Kickstarter. That's what it's for - products which are only viable if a certain number of people put down cash.
    - dmboyd 14y ago
      How does the actel toolkit compare with the xilinx toolkit?

revelation 14y ago

The value in the Arduino is not necessarily in the actual processor, but in the tools, documentation, tutorials and library supplied with the boards. And of course in its large community of users and addons ('shields').

nnnnni 14y ago
Plus the whole "open source hardware" thing...

Sanddancer 14y ago

It does a hell of a lot more than what the propeller can. The chip they use has on-board ADCs and DACs, which makes it a lot easier to interface with analog signals out of the box. It also has a lot more RAM, DMA access so you don't need to use CPU clocks to pull things in and out of memory, support for pretty much any bus you need -- on-board USB slave and host, SPI, I2C, CAN, etc -- for talking to anything in the world. The Propeller was an interesting chip 6 years ago, but the world's more than caught up and surpassed it, with its only saving grace being that it's a cheap multicore chip, but even then, the XMOS chips are far more interesting there.