[En-Nut-Discussion] Ethernut 5 with ARM9 ??

[Harald Kipp]

Hi Alain,

I share your opinion regarding Nut/OS vs. Linux, but we both may be a 
very small minority. :-)

In fact the SAM9260 is overkill for a tiny system like Nut/OS. On the 
other hand, if you want a blindingly fast and tiny system optimized for 
a special purpose, Ethernut 5 may easily outperform larger systems 
running at higher clock rates. I recently heard about a customer, who 
wanted to grab 200 fps from the SAM9 ISI port. It fails, because the 
designers simply forgot to add one more register to the ISI/PDC 
interface, which would make this possible on Linux. With Nut/OS, this 
should still work because of very short interrupt latency times. Image 
processing is also my major motivation for Ethernut 5.

I intended to publish a first schematic some weeks ago, but soemhow I 
got stuck on the non-trivial power supply options (DC, USB and PoE).

Nut/OS has been successfully implemented on the AT91SAM9260 Evaluation 
Kit. You may want to take a look to the Atmel Application Note 'AT91 SAM 
Internet Radio'.

Regarding image processing: I purchased a kit from Omnivision, the 
OV7720 ECX. It runs quite well via USB, but I do not know, whether this 
sensor will work with the AT91SAM ISI. Informations about Atmel's image 
sensor interface in the net are rare and I'd appreciate any pointer to 
similar projects.

Harald

Alain M. schrieb:
> I had a pleasant surprise of findind a reference to Ethernut 5 here 
> <http://www.ethernut.de/en/hardware/index.html>
>
> How far is the devellopment gone?
>
> My interest is to replace one SAM7X with one ARM9 (AT91SAM9260 is my own 
> 1st choice), and all that I see over the net for ARM9 is about Linux.
>
> IMHO Nut/OS is a much better option in a lot of cases (just like the one 
> I have in mind) as I need just a simple system and I want to avoid Linux 
> complexity.
>
>