Propeller II Chip and Development Board Wish List
he1957
Posts: 58
Ok, I'll go first unless I missed a posting or announcement:
A: For the silicon:
1. An·inter-COG communications register providing SRC/DST/#literal or ADD to shared memory
··· Intent is to allow direct access from/to COG to COG.· During I-Fetch cycle, a flag indicates to a
··· COG the normal I-stream data is to be read unless the DST field matches the fetching COG (which
··· should respond back to the SRC·if an ACK was requested by the SRC COG.· The data available for
··· DST could be an·Nbit literal or an address to a shared memory resource the SRC may have set up
··· for subsequent processing by itself or another COG.· Of course, speed is intended by bypassing
··· HUB window accesses - if a literal value is all that is needed.
2. Ability to choose a "boot" device other than EEPROM - SD Cards are good, cheap and resilient
··· The inbuilt chip's ROM code·could determine the protocol the device responds to and continue, prompt
··· if multiple devices detected or default to a specific device.
3. More memory (as discussed in another thread)
··· Inbuilt on-die memory and/or an outside-world·bus to allow expansion.· Depending on limitations
··· this could be a serial·bus or if parallel, could allow external (expanded) memory·to "disable/replace" physical
··· COG memory.· Speed is not the specific intent here - flexibility is.
4. XTAL output
··· To use for daisy-chaining and/or clock synchronisation if using multiple chips or other devices that need it
B: For the Propeller Professional Development Board (PPDB)
Similar to the Propeller I PPDB with the following (extra or expanded) in-builts:
1. BCD decoders for the 16. segment LED displays
2. Serial LCD (option for backlit character cell, graphic and/or touch-screen display)
3. Micro-keypad (option of qwerty style or HEX digits only)
4. Regulated +/- 5 and 12VDC rails - independent of the chip power
5. Two smaller (rather than larger) breadboards (isolate low and high voltage circuits)
6. RF TX/RX modules
7. Bluetooth module
8. I/R TX/RX modules
9. Stereo Microphone/Line/Aux/SPDIF Inputs
10. Ethernet (Gbit [noparse][[/noparse]or higher] would be nice)
11. SD Card sockets (2 to allow copying/backup)
12. User selectable boot device(s) {EEPROM/SDcard/USB/Serial/Other}
13. DIP (or SW/FW selected) switches on default devices to allow their de-selection to allow easy access to all I/O pins if needed
14. FM transmitter (frequency selectable) for both Video and Stereo audio
15. Volume control for sound(s)
16. Unassigned I/O headers and wire-wrap pins to allow easy additional of odd parts with odd connections
The size of the board is less important than having these already "available" without having to "find-and-play" them when you want to use them.· Ater-all, this is a Professional Development Board so it's less likely to be moved around very much.
Well, that's a start and a definite "wish-list" for some of what I can think of just now...
Other ideas?
HarryE.
A: For the silicon:
1. An·inter-COG communications register providing SRC/DST/#literal or ADD to shared memory
··· Intent is to allow direct access from/to COG to COG.· During I-Fetch cycle, a flag indicates to a
··· COG the normal I-stream data is to be read unless the DST field matches the fetching COG (which
··· should respond back to the SRC·if an ACK was requested by the SRC COG.· The data available for
··· DST could be an·Nbit literal or an address to a shared memory resource the SRC may have set up
··· for subsequent processing by itself or another COG.· Of course, speed is intended by bypassing
··· HUB window accesses - if a literal value is all that is needed.
2. Ability to choose a "boot" device other than EEPROM - SD Cards are good, cheap and resilient
··· The inbuilt chip's ROM code·could determine the protocol the device responds to and continue, prompt
··· if multiple devices detected or default to a specific device.
3. More memory (as discussed in another thread)
··· Inbuilt on-die memory and/or an outside-world·bus to allow expansion.· Depending on limitations
··· this could be a serial·bus or if parallel, could allow external (expanded) memory·to "disable/replace" physical
··· COG memory.· Speed is not the specific intent here - flexibility is.
4. XTAL output
··· To use for daisy-chaining and/or clock synchronisation if using multiple chips or other devices that need it
B: For the Propeller Professional Development Board (PPDB)
Similar to the Propeller I PPDB with the following (extra or expanded) in-builts:
1. BCD decoders for the 16. segment LED displays
2. Serial LCD (option for backlit character cell, graphic and/or touch-screen display)
3. Micro-keypad (option of qwerty style or HEX digits only)
4. Regulated +/- 5 and 12VDC rails - independent of the chip power
5. Two smaller (rather than larger) breadboards (isolate low and high voltage circuits)
6. RF TX/RX modules
7. Bluetooth module
8. I/R TX/RX modules
9. Stereo Microphone/Line/Aux/SPDIF Inputs
10. Ethernet (Gbit [noparse][[/noparse]or higher] would be nice)
11. SD Card sockets (2 to allow copying/backup)
12. User selectable boot device(s) {EEPROM/SDcard/USB/Serial/Other}
13. DIP (or SW/FW selected) switches on default devices to allow their de-selection to allow easy access to all I/O pins if needed
14. FM transmitter (frequency selectable) for both Video and Stereo audio
15. Volume control for sound(s)
16. Unassigned I/O headers and wire-wrap pins to allow easy additional of odd parts with odd connections
The size of the board is less important than having these already "available" without having to "find-and-play" them when you want to use them.· Ater-all, this is a Professional Development Board so it's less likely to be moved around very much.
Well, that's a start and a definite "wish-list" for some of what I can think of just now...
Other ideas?
HarryE.
Comments
No seriously, Prop II suggestions have been done to death over the months (also years ?) for example here is THE never ending thread http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=617536 still active today.
I think by now Chip will build what he wants to build.
As for a dev board for it perhaps it's a bit early to think about. I'd be happy with a the barest minimum of a board just to be able to use that surface mount chip in my hand soldered projects.
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For me, the past is not over yet.
Personally, I'd love to see a Propeller board version of something like MikroElektronika offers... a lot of features for ~ $150
At work we have some dev boards for controllers, they were made in Serbia.
These things are really good! I have 2 of my own here at home
one for AVR and one for PIC....the PIC dev board now resides in
my big box-o-junk because I will never have need of it again.
Anyway, these dev boards are well made and you should take a look
at them as they could give good ideas for what we need as a pro dev board
for the much anticipated prop2.
Here is a jpg of the AVR dev board... they are only 129.00
These dev boards are actually rather large...but I see no drawback to that as they
are just for development work and it's nice to have a dev board with easy to get at parts
that are easier to repair.
I think maybe I should email or call one of the techs at the company that makes these
nice dev boards, perhaps they would consider designing one for the prop1 and later the prop2.
www.mikroe.com/
They have dev boards for the sm version of the various controllers that are just like the dip
boards but use carrier boards for the sm chips.
Wow Agent420 you beat me to the punch here as I was creating my post
Great minds think alike!?
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- Some mornings I wake up cranky.....but usually I just let him sleep in -
I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to make a Propeller plugin card for·their universal board.
They also have a very inexpensive touchscreen option for the graphic lcd.
I got the PIC Mikroe dev board as a gift way back when I was in High School...
a freshman I think. The 8bit PICs were the first controllers I ever got to play with.
I had NO IDEA how lame they were until much later. The other girls at school thought I had
morphed into some sort of weird alien creature! they simply could not fathom what that strange Smile
that I was playing with was for, it seemed totally useless to them
The online free programming books produced by Mikroelektronika are great but they need a bit of
editing as I find the tech guys English to be a bit strange lookin!
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- Some mornings I wake up cranky.....but usually I just let him sleep in -
Post Edited (HollyMinkowski) : 8/18/2009 2:22:26 PM GMT
Those prototyping boards look awesome! I'd love to have something like that for Prop I, and Prop II.
Perhaps we should start another thread and get one of our clever PCB guys involved in a collaborated
design? Starting with a place for one of those composite screens from Tim.
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.
Those dev boards are every bit as awesome as they look!
If they had a Propeller board I'd order 2 of them this morning!
I'd have to have a spare you see
If I was good enough to design a big dev board for the Prop1 I'd have a centrally located
pair of solderless breadboards on the thing. I'd have them screwed down and not put on
with adhesive, so they could be easily swapped out when the socket holes started to wear out.
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- Some mornings I wake up cranky.....but usually I just let him sleep in -
Apologies but the only reference I found was the one started by Mr Chip Gracey and he was quite specific in asking about memory or COGS; I'd vote memory first for any implementation of a Propeller chip design. It's way more likely to run out of "ability" to handle "conditions" than "horsepower" to handle them especially with a "cluster on chip" design IMHO
Kill this thread if you feel it should be but I must admit I found the rapid responses with the "other" [noparse][[/noparse]competition] product references most fascinating. They could/should include a Propeller option but I noted they did not have breadboards for HW prototyping
Cheers,
HarryE.
No need to apologize! Please take it in the "jesting" manner it was said.. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
Chip's thread has a life of it's own... Perhaps Dr. Jim could study it and determine that it
has developed it's own intelligence. [noparse]:)[/noparse]
OBC
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New to the Propeller?
Visit the: The Propeller Pages @ Warranty Void.
In that case add a few Alpha-AXP EV9's for some extra grunt so the Props can SPIN while the Alpha's AXP!
HarryE.
Eg. for prop i I would rather have a 64k ram with the last 2k overlapped rom where only the bootstrap code resides. After all the lmm readings, the improved spin interpreter, all the c compilers, won't be nice to have the prop tool (bst) including the interpreter, the font, the sine table in the eeprom image (in the higher 32k) upon user request. For the ones that use them nothing will change (once copied from eeprom to the hub ram), the others will gain a considerable amount of hub memory.
This has nothing to do with the chip building technology it's only different ways of looking at the same thing.
Of course the same thing can be said of prop ii. Here a double function pin more will be useful: depending on its state on reset can choose between an i2c or a spi boot device. For sd class devices I foresee a big future expansion and we'll have more and more capacity in less space: maybe comm protocols will change and incompatibilities will arise: better to boot from well known i2c/spi busses/devices.
Careful OBC- sounds like fightin' words! Maybe Dr. Humanoido will be the first to construct a forum based supercomputer human-level intelligence out of it- in 3D! The race is on! [noparse]:D[/noparse]
Mee too I don't see that much of use of SPIN etc. in the ROM. And then the IDE on silicon. This looks like a terribly wrong decision to me. A lot of efford has to go into making the code bullet proof and error free.
And as soon as the mask is made, there is no chance at all to fix the slightes error. Users will have to live with that forever.
OK, the ROM *can* save some HUB-RAM. But only if you one uses SPIN or the sine-table or the fonts.
The SPIN-interpreter isn't so expensive space-wise, so it can go to RAM, sine-table and fonts are OK for the ROM. And of course the bootup-code.
The more RAM, the better. I'd like to trade ROM-space with freely availabe RAM.
Nick
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Never use force, just go for a bigger hammer!
The DIY Digital-Readout for mills, lathes etc.:
YADRO
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Computers are microcontrolled.
Robots are microcontrolled.
I am microcontrolled.
But you·can·call me micro.
If it's not Parallax then don't even bother.
I have changed my avatar so that I will no longer be confused with others who use generic avatars (and I'm more of a Prop head then a BS2 nut, anyway)
personally i prefer developing on a pc system possibly dualscreen one that make possible have the surces on view at the same time you use eg calculator or when working with matlab (autocad/altiumdxp)·you have so many windows and the desktop area is always to small
Beau was nice enough to show me the difference in die real-estate required for mask ROM and RAM in June. Mask ROM is shockingly small compared to RAM one to one. I do believe that an on-chip development environment is a huge waste of engineering time, but I got the impression that would not be on a first release chip.
There is nothing wrong with thinking about what a dev board would look like with a Propeller-II on it. I would like to know too [noparse]:)[/noparse]
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--Steve
Propalyzer: Propeller PC Logic Analyzer
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=788230
I had something like that in mind.
If it doesn't make such a difference, so be it. But again, don't dump too much engineering time into the ROM. I'd like to see the Prop II better now than tomorrow.
Nick
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Never use force, just go for a bigger hammer!
The DIY Digital-Readout for mills, lathes etc.:
YADRO