 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : ATMEL has lowered theprices to his DEBBUG
| Author | Message | ||||
vasi Guru  Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
-ers. And has a neat little new unit. 
I'm more and more inclined to go for ATMEL's SAM D21 MCUs as opposed to PIC32MX1/MX2 parts but it won't happen to soon 
Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
||||
| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3815 |
The D21 don't look much compared to STM32 at first glance. Are they & if so why? The debugger doesn't look special or cheap, except compared to some previous but hideously overpriced Atmel ones, or what have I missed? John |
||||
| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
You can have it for $32 without the case and cables (compared to $85 complete). Atmel debuggers were (very) expensive. And can do both AVR and ARM. The price is great! Microchip have one at $190 About SAM D20/21, see this brochure. [quote]The most energy-efficient ARM processor yet, the Cortex-M0+ builds on the Cortex-M0 processor—retaining its full instruction set and tool compatibility—while further reducing energy consumption and increasing performance. SAM D ARM Cortex-M0+ based MCUs operate at 48MHz and feature a two-stage pipeline, single-cycle I/O access, single-cycle 32x32 multiplier, event system, and a fast and flexible interrupt controller. Highly efficient, the Atmel SAM D family reaches 2.14 CoreMark/MHz – 0.93 DMIPS/MHz[/quote] Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
||||
| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3815 |
JTAG debugger devices are cheaper and work with many more chips. The D21 looks quite poor compared to STM32. Now, the D21 may be better value than say Arduino but that's not saying much. John |
||||
| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
John, I opposed this to PIC32MX1/MX2. If you are kind, you can see the entire ARM offer of Atmel and you may see that there are also much powerful families. SAM Dx family is designed as an alternative to AVR family, being as "easy-to-use" as them. It will help tremendously the beginners who want to enter in the ARM world coming from AVRs. Do you have a cheaper JTAG programmer/debbuger for this family and supported by Atmel Studio? Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
||||
| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3815 |
I don't know which ones Atmel Studio supports but that's because I don't have any reason or desire to use Atmel Studio. I can use open source tools such as gdb, Eclipse & OpenOCD so have no desire at all to go with something restricted. If you only want to say that Atmel have some chips better than PIC32MX1/2 then it seems to me a pretty pointless comparison as there are so many other better chips. John |
||||
| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
I didn't said that! I talked about my options and choices and that it will be great to have such a tool which can be used on both families. You are twisting the meaning of my post entirely. It is obvious that you are sensible regarding Microchip so, what about "on par with"? You know, it is at least comforting for an AVR user to know that he can have options at least on par (if better, then even better) with others without leaving a familiar environment. I played with PIC32 micros, I can see both pros an cons, and I am now curious about SAM Dx and especially about Atmel's statement "Avr's easy-to-use ported to ARMs". An easy way for me to go with ARMs. Unfortunately, that will not be so soon. But if you want that my post to go your way, as a user of both Microchip and Atmel products, I can have a clear image about a product and another. I like very much to do comparisons and "smackdowns" between similar compilers and microcontrollers firstly for my own personal interest as a consumer. I'm counting on you to say when and why I am wrong. I will be a man enough to recognize when you have valid points. Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
||||
graynomad Senior Member  Joined: 21/07/2010 Location: AustraliaPosts: 122 |
Those D20s look good, I've got too much on right now to play with them unfortunately but I'm thinking to use them for a range of sensor nodes. Re the Atmel ICE, is there a manual or something that details the pinout of the headers, I'm doing a new board and would like to add JTAG to it. I thought I'd just use the Due's schematic but it doesn't seem to match anything I can find. Rob Gray, AKA the Graynomad, www.robgray.com |
||||
| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3815 |
Atmel generally seem rather expensive. Anyone with an interest in ARM may as well move to other makes than Atmel. Saves money, more tools (which are also cheaper), more performance, more samples on the net and so on. It looks like anyone not already using Atmel's ARM devices might do a lot better not to start or at least to look hard at other ones first. They have open source tools like gcc with its good optimisation, as well as gdb, eclipse & OpenOCD. All free. All work on Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. John |
||||
| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
I agree with you regarding the price. Is the only big complain I have against. But for 8bit micros, personally I decided that AVR is the best option. Not only because we have a completely open-source toolchain (including Eclipse, and debugging), but mainly because of "easy-of-use" of those peripherals and interrupts. It does not have the PIC's multitude of options and the "Transformer" kind of re-configurations but because the AVR peripherals are separate of each other, they simply work. You can do a SD-Card logger in no time because the SPI peripheral is simple to operate and the AVR architecture will easily allow you to have big arrays, without tricks. That is true also for I2C hardware peripheral (named TWI) and any other peripheral. As a PIC programmer, you won't know this until you really move for awhile on the AVR camp (not as an intruder, willing to fight against, but as a curious explorer). Now, if I have this "AVR's easy-of-use" on the ARM, then moving to it and porting an AVR project to SAM D20 ARM is possible in a much shorter period of time that starting from scratch on another ARM. SAM Dx was specially made to easy the transition for AVR programmers. Of course, we can go for something bigger from start, but I think this is the most attractive option. The open-source gcc toolchain is available for this family as well. Arduino project should consider this option. The first inconvenient right now is regarding to the humidity level of the case (MSL=3). PIC32 provide something similar for PIC programmers (maybe the level of compatibility is even higher). Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
||||
| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3815 |
I thought the cheap AVRs had so little RAM you couldn't have big arrays! Which one(s) were you meaning? I used the 8-bit PICs for a while but dumped them as soon as cheap 32-bit devices with useful amounts of RAM (& flash) and sane architectures were available. The pathetic amounts of RAM (not to mention the bizarre instruction sets) of 8-bit chips reminded me very unpleasantly of the 8008 and so on. Great at the time but a real PITA. John |
||||
| vasi Guru Joined: 23/03/2007 Location: RomaniaPosts: 1697 |
Then you don't know that PIC's RAM is fragmented so you can't have arrays bigger than 256 bytes (guess how big is a FAT sector) without some tricks. The only C compiler I know to provide arrays bigger than 256 is XC8 (didn't verified this on mikroC or CCS C). JALv2, PMP, and I guess also GCB provide arrays of maximum 256 bytes. You know, this kind of talk, [quote]I thought the cheap AVRs had so little RAM you couldn't have big arrays! Which one(s) were you meaning[/quote] I don't know what to think of it. SD-Card access should have been a clue to you Anyway, we are talking here about micros with at least 1KB of RAM memory. 28-DIP capsule: - from ATmega88 (8Kb FLASH/1Kb SRAM) to ATmega328(32Kb FLASH/2Kb SRAM) 40-DIP capsule: - from ATmega164 (16Kb FLASH/1Kb SRAM) to ATmega1284(128Kb FLASH/16Kb SRAM) Pick one. Hobbit name: Togo Toadfoot of Frogmorton Elvish name: Mablung Miriel Beyound Arduino Lang |
||||
| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3815 |
Er, 1K is not a big array. I can't imagine why you would say "big" about anything in the 1K range. You're talking about poverty-spec chips. John |
||||
 Print this page |
