Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G4

Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G4

[Richard Rauch]

 
Dear community,
 
I want to announce a development project. It is an eCos port to the Atmel's
ARM9 microcontroller family, in particular a port to the SAM9G45.
It is planned to contribute the result of the project to the eCos
repository.
 
I would be very glad to get some response, whether the planned port is of
common interest!
 
Best Regards
 
Richard Rauch
email: rrauch@itrgmbh.de

ITR GmbH 
Informationstechnologie Rauch 
D-90425 Nuremberg
 
 

Re: Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G4

[Jürgen Lambrecht]

On 20:59, Richard Rauch wrote:
>
> Dear community,
>
> I want to announce a development project. It is an eCos port to the Atmel's
> ARM9 microcontroller family, in particular a port to the SAM9G45.
> It is planned to contribute the result of the project to the eCos
> repository.
>
> I would be very glad to get some response, whether the planned port is of
> common interest!
>
>    
Dear Richard,

I am interested, as we also use Atmel ARM processors.
Hey I wonder: why don't you use Linux on such a powerfull ARM9?
We also still use eCos, but more and more I have to defend it against 
using Linux instead. Maybe you can help me defending eCos ;-).

Success with it,
Jürgen
---
Jürgen Lambrecht
R&D Engineer
Televic Transport Systems
Tel: +32 (0)51 303045
Fax: +32 (0)51 310670
http://www.televic.com
Televic  NV - Leo Bekaertlaan 1 - 8870 Izegem - Belgium
Company number 0402.757.955 - RPR Kortrijk

AW: Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G45

[Richard Rauch]

Dear Jürgen,

in my opinion eCos has some advantages:

- small footprint
- good realtime behaviour
- very short interrupt latency times, minimal overhead for task context
switching 
- available for small microcontrollers (arm7,cortex m3)

I have less experience with linux systems, but i think, linux has some
advantages, when the application works with a graphical user interface.
I have been working with eCos for about 10 years already and I have made
very good experiences.
I have made already a port for AT91RM9200 for some high performance
products, but developed some low level products, based on ARM7 controllers,
too.
So eCos is suitable for a wide product range. Have a look to www.vipa.de, a
lot of the products there (PLCs, communication modules, I/O-Modules) are
based on eCos.

Richard

Richard Rauch
email: rrauch@itrgmbh.de
 
_______________________________________________

ITR GmbH 
Informationstechnologie Rauch 
Schnepfenreuther Hauptstrasse 27b
D-90425 Nuernberg
 
web:   http://www.itrgmbh.de
email: info@itrgmbh.de
 
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Richard Rauch
Handelsregister: Nuernberg HR B 21676
USt-Id Nr. : DE228051873
_______________________________________________
 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: ecos-devel-owner@ecos.sourceware.org
[mailto:ecos-devel-owner@ecos.sourceware.org] Im Auftrag von Jürgen
Lambrecht
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 4. März 2010 08:18
An: Richard Rauch; ecos-devel@sourceware.org
Betreff: Re: Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G4

On 20:59, Richard Rauch wrote:
>
> Dear community,
>
> I want to announce a development project. It is an eCos port to the 
> Atmel's
> ARM9 microcontroller family, in particular a port to the SAM9G45.
> It is planned to contribute the result of the project to the eCos 
> repository.
>
> I would be very glad to get some response, whether the planned port is 
> of common interest!
>
>    
Dear Richard,

I am interested, as we also use Atmel ARM processors.
Hey I wonder: why don't you use Linux on such a powerfull ARM9?
We also still use eCos, but more and more I have to defend it against using
Linux instead. Maybe you can help me defending eCos ;-).

Success with it,
Jürgen
---
Jürgen Lambrecht
R&D Engineer
Televic Transport Systems
Tel: +32 (0)51 303045
Fax: +32 (0)51 310670
http://www.televic.com
Televic  NV - Leo Bekaertlaan 1 - 8870 Izegem - Belgium Company number
0402.757.955 - RPR Kortrijk

Re: Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G45

[Stanislav Meduna]

On 04.03.2010 10:38, Richard Rauch wrote:

> - small footprint
> - good realtime behaviour
> - very short interrupt latency times, minimal overhead for task context
> switching 
> - available for small microcontrollers (arm7,cortex m3)

And last but not least: in my opinion the eCos structure
is cleaner and there is a lot less dependencies between
various parts of the operating system.

>> Maybe you can help me defending eCos ;-).

From my experience it is nearly impossible to write
a non-trivial realtime application for Linux - in my
opinion it simply is not there yet. I tried to port
an application using realtime timers and ethernet
networking to a variant of OSADL linux
(http://www.osadl.org/). I ended hunting deadlocks
and priority inversion cases over the whole system,
had kernel softirq threads in uninterruptible sleeps
(that shouldn't happen except hardware failure).
I spoke to other developers who tried Linux for
this kind of stuff and they had similar experience.

The same application works like a charm under eCos
or without using the realtime threads.


I'd recommend Linux in following cases:

- no or soft realtime
- you need virtual memory
- you need to load code dynamically
- having separate processes instead of threads is an
  advantage
- userspace/kernelspace isolation is needed
- you need something (e.g. a driver) only the linux provides
  and don't have time/resources to port it

Otherwise the eCos is better bet for an embedded device.

Regards
-- 
                                Stano

Mapping of ARM Architecture to Repository

[Richard Rauch]

Hi all,

First I proudly want to notify, that I was able to establish a collaboration
between my company ITR GmbH and Atmel Corporation.
Subject of this collaboration is, that my company will be responsible for
Atmel's activities regarding realtime operation system eCos.

First project within the scope of this collaboration is the porting of eCos
to the Atmel AT91SAM9G45 microcontroller, which I have already announced to
the community some time ago.

Because Atmel is interested in not only providing a port to this
microcontroller, but also to provide ports to other ARM based product
families, I want to start a discussion about the repository structure.

The problem is, that there is a large variety of ARM based microcontroller
cores (ARM7,ARM9,... Cortex-M0,M3,...,Cortex A8,A9,....).
This core families are subdivided also into some special core versions (e.g.
922, 926,...).
Each of the core families and variants has more or less some differences.

So, in my opinion, the structure of the repository is not sufficient to map
the core differences.

In principle, is it possible to make changes in the structures? In the
moment, there are subdirectories hal/arm/arch, hal/arm/arm9 and hal/arm/xxxx
for different microcontrollers.

Maybe somebody has already some ideas, how a structure should be made to fit
best to the differnt arm architectures.

Richard


Richard Rauch
email: rrauch@itrgmbh.de
 
_______________________________________________

ITR GmbH 
Informationstechnologie Rauch 
Schnepfenreuther Hauptstrasse 27b
D-90425 Nuernberg
 
_______________________________________________

Re: Mapping of ARM Architecture to Repository

[John Dallaway]

Hi Richard

Richard Rauch wrote:

> First I proudly want to notify, that I was able to establish a collaboration
> between my company ITR GmbH and Atmel Corporation.
> Subject of this collaboration is, that my company will be responsible for
> Atmel's activities regarding realtime operation system eCos.

Congratulations! That is great news for the eCos community.

> First project within the scope of this collaboration is the porting of eCos
> to the Atmel AT91SAM9G45 microcontroller, which I have already announced to
> the community some time ago.

I know that you are intending to contribute the AT91SAM9G45 port to the
eCos project. Is your company also intending to contribute other ports
you will develop in the future? Any plans for an AT91SAM3 port?

> Because Atmel is interested in not only providing a port to this
> microcontroller, but also to provide ports to other ARM based product
> families, I want to start a discussion about the repository structure.
> 
> The problem is, that there is a large variety of ARM based microcontroller
> cores (ARM7,ARM9,... Cortex-M0,M3,...,Cortex A8,A9,....).
> This core families are subdivided also into some special core versions (e.g.
> 922, 926,...).
> Each of the core families and variants has more or less some differences.
> 
> So, in my opinion, the structure of the repository is not sufficient to map
> the core differences.

The existing repository structure is intended to be very flexible,
allowing for architecture, variant, processor and platforms HALs to be
used together in multiple combinations.

> In principle, is it possible to make changes in the structures? In the
> moment, there are subdirectories hal/arm/arch, hal/arm/arm9 and hal/arm/xxxx
> for different microcontrollers.

In principle, we can certainly add new directory hierarchies to
accommodate new HALs. As you know, the key point is to discuss
everything in advance on the ecos-devel list, justify your proposal and
obtain agreement from the eCos maintainers before you start.

We do tend to be cautious in re-organising existing code because it is
not always possible to test the changes.

John Dallaway
eCos maintainer

Re: Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G4

[John Dallaway]

Hi Richard

> I want to announce a development project. It is an eCos port to the Atmel's
> ARM9 microcontroller family, in particular a port to the SAM9G45.
> It is planned to contribute the result of the project to the eCos
> repository.
>  
> I would be very glad to get some response, whether the planned port is of
> common interest!

A port to the AT91SAM9G45 is undoubtedly of value to the eCos community.
Thank you for announcing your plans early. This helps other members of
the community in their own planning.

We do need to be careful about merge work here. There is a patch from
Evgeniy Dushistov which provides support for the AT91SAM9236-EK board
and also re-organises the ARM7/ARM9 abstraction:

  http://bugs.ecos.sourceware.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1000819

I would say that it makes sense to base any further work off a
repository with this patch applied. However, the patch is still subject
to review.

Would you like the maintainers to register your project? Details at:

  http://ecos.sourceware.org/contrib.html

John Dallaway
eCos maintainer

AW: Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G45

[Richard Rauch]

Hi John,

thanks for the hint regarding the AT91SAM9236-EK board. I will have a look
on it.

It would be a good idea to register the project and to add it to the table
of Registered Projects.


Richard Rauch
email: rrauch@itrgmbh.de
 
_______________________________________________

ITR GmbH 
Informationstechnologie Rauch 
Schnepfenreuther Hauptstrasse 27b
D-90425 Nuernberg
 
web:   http://www.itrgmbh.de
email: info@itrgmbh.de
 
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Richard Rauch
Handelsregister: Nuernberg HR B 21676
USt-Id Nr. : DE228051873
_______________________________________________
 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: ecos-devel-owner@ecos.sourceware.org
[mailto:ecos-devel-owner@ecos.sourceware.org] Im Auftrag von John Dallaway
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 4. März 2010 09:36
An: Richard Rauch
Cc: eCos development list
Betreff: Re: Port to Atmel ARM9 Microcontroller SAM9G4

Hi Richard

> I want to announce a development project. It is an eCos port to the 
> Atmel's
> ARM9 microcontroller family, in particular a port to the SAM9G45.
> It is planned to contribute the result of the project to the eCos 
> repository.
>  
> I would be very glad to get some response, whether the planned port is 
> of common interest!

A port to the AT91SAM9G45 is undoubtedly of value to the eCos community.
Thank you for announcing your plans early. This helps other members of the
community in their own planning.

We do need to be careful about merge work here. There is a patch from
Evgeniy Dushistov which provides support for the AT91SAM9236-EK board and
also re-organises the ARM7/ARM9 abstraction:

  http://bugs.ecos.sourceware.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1000819

I would say that it makes sense to base any further work off a repository
with this patch applied. However, the patch is still subject to review.

Would you like the maintainers to register your project? Details at:

  http://ecos.sourceware.org/contrib.html

John Dallaway
eCos maintainer