GCC, Prop II future of Propeller and SPIN
mumcs01
Posts: 3
With the beta of Propeller GCC, and in the announcement of the beta of Propeller GCC the mention of 'all the development will be fed into Propeller II', I have some questions about the future that perhaps someone from Parallax can answer. I apologize in advance if this is answered somewhere else, but I couldn't find it.
- With the advent of GCC for the Propeller, will further development continue on SPIN for the propeller, and more importantly will Propeller 2 be a GCC / Assembler only chip. Is SPIN going to continue on to the next generation of chip? I know its been a somewhat controversial language depending on who you talked to. I actually like it.
- Will Propeller II EOL Propeller I? I've opted to start some new projects on Propeller instead of the the PIC, and it would be pretty frustrating to see all my work not be worth anything as the project has a 5 year life. (It happened to me on the SX, so I'm skidish).
- I'm not a C guy. I know I need to learn, but how is the whole object library going to work for Propeller with GCC? Can Spin objects work in the GCC environment, or will there need to be separate C objects that will only be for use with GCC, and SPIN objects that will only work in the SPIN environment.
Just curious. Thanks!
Mike.
- With the advent of GCC for the Propeller, will further development continue on SPIN for the propeller, and more importantly will Propeller 2 be a GCC / Assembler only chip. Is SPIN going to continue on to the next generation of chip? I know its been a somewhat controversial language depending on who you talked to. I actually like it.
- Will Propeller II EOL Propeller I? I've opted to start some new projects on Propeller instead of the the PIC, and it would be pretty frustrating to see all my work not be worth anything as the project has a 5 year life. (It happened to me on the SX, so I'm skidish).
- I'm not a C guy. I know I need to learn, but how is the whole object library going to work for Propeller with GCC? Can Spin objects work in the GCC environment, or will there need to be separate C objects that will only be for use with GCC, and SPIN objects that will only work in the SPIN environment.
Just curious. Thanks!
Mike.
Comments
I think Prop I will be around for a long time. It will be lower in cost, consume less standby power and require only one power supply. There will still be a lot of applications where Prop I works just fine.
There is a conversion program that converts Spin objects to C++. This can be used to link Spin code to C/C++. The drawback is that this requires more memory, but on the other hand it will run faster. Another approach is to run C code in one or more cogs while running Spin code in other cogs. They would communicate through mailboxes in hub RAM.
1) SPIN is important and will continue to be fully supported.
2) Prop1 and Prop2 target two totally different markets. Both will continue production into the foreseeable future.
3) I'm not 100% on this one, but there are ways of getting spin into GCC, but it doesn't seem rock solid quite yet. I know they're working on it!
As others have already mentioned there currently aren't plans to drop spin or pasm from the prop2.
As far as "having" to learn C don't sweat it. I've "had" to learn a lot of different programming languages in my life and have come to realize that in the end programming is programming and while some languages are suited to particular tasks the skills needed to be good at programming transfers quickly and easily between languages. If you can program in spin you'll do fine with C and C++!!
It is only software, why would it go away ?
There are many more reasons for it to continue.
Prop 1 Spin is in Rom, so that makes it a locked standard, but prop 2 will allow Spin 2....
Is is the same package, price and power profile ? Then the answer is obviously no.
Any future EOL on a Prop 1 will more likely be FAB driven - when no one can build it anymore...
I don't see any reason for the propeller II to supplant the propeller 1 in the things it does well. Although the prop II has new capabilities, it also draws more power and is more complicated. The prop II is likely to create entirely new applications - some will be more computer-like due to graphics capability and more memory, but some will be more electrical engineering focused with unknown applications because there has never been a microcontroller with 90+ pins that has A/D, D/A, video scaler and multiple oscillators before - so who knows.
Prop II will use an enhanced spin also because it was designed to take advantage of the architecture of an 8-cog parallel computer. I was really a proponent of having a C, and now that I see what the code looks like, I see advantages but somehow SPIN seems simpler....
Finally, I think that the real gap in the parallax portfolio is really on the low end - something that the SX and STAMP fulfilled in the past and is being filled in by the arduino. They could probably use a lower pin count prop 1.5.
Mike welcome to the forums.
I'm really surprised that many people, like you, do not direct these questions to http://www.parallaxsemiconductor.com/
Parallax does not always surf these forums, but a question to one of the Application Engineers at the above link, will get you an answer in a much more timely manner.
That said, many of use can try a direct you to recent activity, but it tends to get buried in the forum threads just because of all the activity that goes on here. Hang in there. In the mean time, try both means of getting an answer.
Jim
Oh, and invent-o-doc, I totally agree with you. I would love a scaled down prop for small embedded use. Thats why I loved the sx so much. I switched over to pic when sx discontinuation was announced, but I missed the parallax support and comprehensive learning and teaching tools.
Anyway. Thanks again!
As someone who has done more C programming in his life than any other language (followed closely by pascal and python), I really do find programming the prop in spin to be refreshing. I hope spin continues to be actively supported and extended for the Prop II.
I also join in the calls for a prop 1,5, perhaps somewhere in the range of an 18 to 28 pin footprint. Maybe 4 or 6 cores. Lower power, smaller pin count, and easier to embed in smaller projects/products. It would complete the line.
I would love that, too.
It's not like you could take the Prop I design and just cut it in half. Chip design doesn't work that way. There have been very very long threads posted that have hashed over this sort of thing and you're talking about mostly starting over from scratch, maybe not all the way since you can salvage most of the building blocks, but a huge amount of the work is in the interconnections and that would have to be redone. The Prop I is a large chip and, although cutting the number of cogs would make it smaller in terms of total area, the dimensions required might still cause problems in a smaller package (the chip might be long and thin). In any case, you're talking about a couple of years of work.
Some interesting questions that have been discussed before include: 1) How many cogs would be 'enough' for a small Prop? Would that reduction be enough to reduce the chip area to where there's an advantage to making a smaller chip? 2) Would reducing the amount of SRAM help the chip area enough? 3) Would reducing any of the features of the Prop I cripple the chip enough that it couldn't compete at all with the PICs and AVRs and ATMegas of the world, particularly given that they will continue to evolve while a new Prop design is underway?
That's being very optimistic considering the small size of the design team. Still, I think it's appropriate to remind our friends at Parallax that a smaller Propeller has a market and should resources become available it would be worth pursuing.
Re: Future of SPIN. Let's hope SPIN gets a few extensions to plug some holes we know about now. I love SPIN. It might not be the most expressive language right now, but it sure is fun.
It should be simply P2 chip in DIP40/44pin SMD
"spin is like python"
OK not a direct quote but really, yes they both use white space for block indenting, after that there are very few similarities.
I hope we get in line LMM PASM as one extension.
A smaller cheaper chip for cost sensitive projects.
Dunno about a two-hole, though.
That's kind of a curious creature, isn't it?
Two cogs and a hub?
A high-performance bottom-end jelly-bean controller?
A subset of C can be taught to beginners that includes most of the features of Spin. This would shield the beginner from having to worry about structs, function pointers and other features that may be confusing to a new programmer.
Once you're comfortable with Spin and PASM, I see no technical advantages from moving to C. The main advantage it has is bringing current C users into the Propeller fold, not bringing current Propeller users into the C fold.
-Phil
http://www.parallaxsemiconductor.com/Products/propeller2specs