Controlling FEI 5680A
On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Magnus Danielson
magnus@rubidium.dyndns.org wrote:
A short notice on embedded CPU/MPUs into FPGAs. Using PIC or AVR might be
tempting, but I consider any clone "dirty" from a rights perspective, MIPS
for instance have been very protective on their side, so has ARM. So far has
the SPARC been the only big one
Look at "open cores". There are dozens to choose from. Many are GLP or LGPL.
http://opencores.org/projects
I doubt anyone wants a MIPS or Pentium in a controller. You'd be
using an 8-bit uP.
Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California
On 01/15/2012 11:34 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:
On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 7:45 AM, Magnus Danielson
magnus@rubidium.dyndns.org wrote:
A short notice on embedded CPU/MPUs into FPGAs. Using PIC or AVR might be
tempting, but I consider any clone "dirty" from a rights perspective, MIPS
for instance have been very protective on their side, so has ARM. So far has
the SPARC been the only big one
Look at "open cores". There are dozens to choose from. Many are GLP or LGPL.
http://opencores.org/projects
I doubt anyone wants a MIPS or Pentium in a controller. You'd be
using an 8-bit uP.
You missed my point. My point was that even if you have that nice and
dandy list of CPUs with good locking licenses on the clone code, it
doesn't mean that one is free to use it in commercial context.
Sorry for not being so clear about that. I was somewhat distracted when
I wrote it.
Cheers,
Magnus
On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:45:56 +0100
Magnus Danielson magnus@rubidium.dyndns.org wrote:
A short notice on embedded CPU/MPUs into FPGAs. Using PIC or AVR might
be tempting, but I consider any clone "dirty" from a rights perspective,
MIPS for instance have been very protective on their side, so has ARM.
So far has the SPARC been the only big one being accepted in their
LEON-x variants that I know of. We be sad to see the cotton industry
level being smashed by the big firm lawyers.
Erm... You trust too much in corporate mambojambo...
- These clones implement an ISA (instruction set architecture)
- You cannot copyright an ISA (the same as you cannot copyright a header file)
- You can only copyright a specific implementation
- You can patent certain ways how instructions work (see MIPS)
These clones are thus not any more dirty then their originals.
Only that the companies don't want you to use them. Which, from
their point of view is understandable: It takes time and money
to come up with a good ISA. It is something that you cannot easily
protect (see above). But the companies want you to buy their chips,
not the ones from their competitor. Hence, if they cannot get rid
of those clones, they try to get as much FUD out as possible to ensure
that nobody is using those clones. If this clone is produced by a company,
the company will challange that FUD and get rid of it legally. If the
clone is done by a few guys in their free time and released as open source
(resp open hardware), then they will not have the time and money to battle
that FUD. and innocent people like you will fall for it.
Attila Kinali
--
The trouble with you, Shev, is you don't say anything until you've saved
up a whole truckload of damned heavy brick arguments and then you dump
them all out and never look at the bleeding body mangled beneath the heap
-- Tirin, The Dispossessed, U. Le Guin
On 01/16/2012 11:31 AM, Attila Kinali wrote:
On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:45:56 +0100
Magnus Danielsonmagnus@rubidium.dyndns.org wrote:
A short notice on embedded CPU/MPUs into FPGAs. Using PIC or AVR might
be tempting, but I consider any clone "dirty" from a rights perspective,
MIPS for instance have been very protective on their side, so has ARM.
So far has the SPARC been the only big one being accepted in their
LEON-x variants that I know of. We be sad to see the cotton industry
level being smashed by the big firm lawyers.
Erm... You trust too much in corporate mambojambo...
- These clones implement an ISA (instruction set architecture)
- You cannot copyright an ISA (the same as you cannot copyright a header file)
- You can only copyright a specific implementation
- You can patent certain ways how instructions work (see MIPS)
These clones are thus not any more dirty then their originals.
Only that the companies don't want you to use them. Which, from
their point of view is understandable: It takes time and money
to come up with a good ISA. It is something that you cannot easily
protect (see above). But the companies want you to buy their chips,
not the ones from their competitor. Hence, if they cannot get rid
of those clones, they try to get as much FUD out as possible to ensure
that nobody is using those clones. If this clone is produced by a company,
the company will challange that FUD and get rid of it legally. If the
clone is done by a few guys in their free time and released as open source
(resp open hardware), then they will not have the time and money to battle
that FUD. and innocent people like you will fall for it.
While I essentially agrees with you, I don't want to be on the wrong end
of their lawyers. That's all I'm saying.
Cheers,
Magnus
On 1/14/12 9:18 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:
Not over kill at all. It is worth paying a few $$ not to have to
design a PCB. Worse then that is that most will take shortcuts and
design it so that you need a sppepcial IC programmer to program the
PIC. Thee $20 development boards allow you to download the firmware
over USB so users can do it themselves.
I'm looking at this pair of boards:
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoEthernetShield
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno
Ethernet and and SD card slot might seem overkill too. But I want to
track performance, read out the phase difference over time and so one.
So I want to be able to connect a desktop computer and a USB cable is
to short. Ethernet will let me check from work or with my phone.
the SD card can be used to log data. Likely hold a two years of data
on a 8GB card.
I've got just that pair.. several of them.
It's great..what's nice about Arduino is that you can just go buy one at
Radio Shack. For a lot of applications, it's a nice simple solution
with minimal hassles and fooling around.
Examples get you started with things like simple webservers, etc.
The Arduino language is a sort of C, and for some reason Arduino land
uses non standard jargon (sketches, shields), but it's not too bad.
I had a summer intern who had never programmed before in his life turn
one into a controller to cycle three solenoid valves in a couple weeks.
If you like PICs, that works too. There are off the shelf boards, etc.
that work fairly well.
What all of these don't do well is complex stuff. If your program gets
over, say, 1000 lines, you're probably trying to do too much for that
little machine. It's not a multitasking operating system with disk
drives, etc. Even if there ARE a lot of libraries that make it seem
like a full-up environment (e.g. BSD sockets, file systems on SD) it
really isn't. it's still a little embedded microcontroller.