[En-Nut-Discussion] Re: [En-Nut-Announce] Version 3.4.2 Available

[Rick Collins]

At 06:04 AM 3/9/2004, you wrote:

> >
> > >
> > >What was the descision for the ARM processor that
> > >you are using ? Did you settle on the Atmel range ?
> >
> > Yes, I chose the AT92R40008.
> >
>
>For a later day, when the time is there, the new ARM-7 based
>Philips LPC210x series would be a VERY interesting chip
>to port to.

Maybe I just have ARM envy, but it is driving me crazy (a short trip) that 
everyone on the planet seems to be talking about the Philips ARM MCUs and 
no one has even noticed the OKI chips.  The Philips LPC210x chips are very 
limited with no external bus and would be very difficult to connect to 
anything that requires a high bandwidth.  So far, that is all Philips has 
produced, busless chips.  The LPC22xx chips will have an external bus, but 
are not even sampling yet.

On the other hand, OKI has been making the ML67Q400x and ML67Q500x chips 
for months.  These two families are nearly identical with up to 512 kB of 
Flash, 32kB of SRAM and lots of peripherals such as 2 UARTs, SPI, I2C, PWM, 
ADC, DMA, GPIO, etc...  PLUS they have an external 16 bit bus for memory or 
IO expansion.  The 400x runs at up to 33 MHz and the 500x runs at up to 60 
MHz.  They need 144 pins to support all that IO and bus, so they come in 
144 LQFP and 144 BGA (11 mm sq).

They are cheap too.  I have been quoted prices from $6 to $10.  Add a $5 
SDRAM chip and you have a system to run any embedded OS you can think of 
including uCLinux.  Using the internal SRAM you can easily run nearly any 
normal embedded OS.  Did I mention that the 500x version has 8 kB of cache?

OKI has told me that they will be introducing a new version with builtin 
10/100 Enet MAC soon and one with USB 2.0.

Rick Collins



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