[Icc-avr] 64 bits FP chip....

[Richard]

At 01:42 AM 5/16/2007, David Brown wrote:
>Richard, this chip is a factor of 10 out in terms of value for money 
>- and that's assuming you can run it at full speed without the AVR 
>overhead.  Factor in transfers from the AVR, and you are another 
>factor of 10 out.  I can't imagine any situation where it would be 
>worth spending $30 to get that sort of minimal FP performance.  If I 
>have a project for which the AVR does not have the performance, I 
>switch architectures - an ARM or a ColdFire will give you vastly 
>better value for money.  Even the smallest of these devices will do 
>software floating point faster than this iFPLightning chip, and it 
>will do everything else much faster too.  About the only situation 
>where this device might appeal is for hobbyists who like the DIP 
>package and can't solder a QFP device - that's not a big customer base.

It's based on a 70MHz ARM7TDMI. The target audience is for people who 
want to stay with their AVR, M8C, etc. but still want FP support. 
Yes, it's a relatively small market and yes, the price looks high. 
It's something that I will work on.

>If you have too much time on your hands, consider making a ICC 
>compiler for the new ColdFire V1 cores.  You'd enjoy writing it (the 
>ColdFire cpu is very nice), and it would fit your customer type well 
>- the ColdFire V1's are basically going to be common 8-bit Freescale 
>devices with the old 6808 cores swapped out with a 32-bit ColdFire 
>core.  This means small and robust microcontrollers with easy-to-use 
>peripherals, but with a much more powerful processor core.

Heh, no worry about too much free time :-) We are committed to doing 
a Parallax Propeller C. Also will be working on AVR Studio plug in 
integration for the AVR, and it's highly likely that we will do a 
PIC24 compiler and also a AVR32 UC3 compiler.

ColdFire is very interesting, but it depends on the market conditions...

Thanks.

// richard (This email is for mailing lists. To reach me directly, 
please use richard at imagecraft.com)