[En-Nut-Discussion] SAM9260-EK getting started

[Harald Kipp]

steve wrote:
> 
>   If I program the webradio application into dataflash on my 9260-EK,
>   (along with the Atmel bootloader) then it works.  Programming directly
>   into SDRAM @ 0x20000000 it fails.  Clearly there's something in that
>   bootloader that makes all the difference, does this make any sense?

Indeed, there may be a missing initialization in the SAM-BA ROM or the 
Webradio, which is provided by the boot loader. Unfortunately I haven't 
had the time to test all this here. At least I do have the same board 
revision 1.0.

> 
>   I now have another problem - my LJG JPEG decompression application
>   runs slightly _SLOWER_ on the 9260-EK (CPU clk 90.3MHz) than on my old
>   SAM7X-EK (CPU clock at 48MHz).  I moved to ARM9 specifically to get
>   more speed, does anyone have any idea why?

I had a discussion with Atmel about similar experiences with the MP3 
fixed point software decoder used in the webradio. They later changed 
the SDRAM initialization (SAM-BA script and bootloader) and performance 
increased. It was still slower than expected, but significantly faster 
than the SAM7X. In case you are using an old SAM-BA Tool or boot loader...

Harald