The ARMs race

A quote from P18F4550 on another thread (referring to the new powerful boards being released all the time)

whats happened in the last 12 months and imagine what will arrive in the next 12,

Maybe it's just my inner grumpy old man but I'm a bit sick of this ARMs race to add as much as possible to a postage stamp sized PCB. I'd like some stability so there's time for a stable ecosystem to grow even if the latest and greatest features aren't included...hmm just like the Arduino in fact.

We have been saying that the Due has missed the boat but I think it's saving grace may be that it will not try to join the ARMs race but be a relatively simple board with grunt and a turn-key environment. I'm assuming this of course.

Hopefully all will be revealed tomorrow at the NYMF.


Rob

Graynomad:
A quote from P18F4550 on another thread (referring to the new powerful boards being released all the time)

whats happened in the last 12 months and imagine what will arrive in the next 12,

Maybe it's just my inner grumpy old man but I'm a bit sick of this ARMs race to add as much as possible to a postage stamp sized PCB. I'd like some stability so there's time for a stable ecosystem to grow even if the latest and greatest features aren't included...hmm just like the Arduino in fact.

We have been saying that the Due has missed the boat but I think it's saving grace may be that it will not try to join the ARMs race but be a relatively simple board with grunt and a turn-key environment. I'm assuming this of course.

Hopefully all will be revealed tomorrow at the NYMF.


Rob

I agree. The original arduino concept was very much aimed at the raw beginner to programming and basic electronics, it was never intended to be an industrial grade general purpose microcontroller development board. The simplicity of a 8 bit micro is well suited to this type of user group and should remain viable as long as the 8 bit AVR chips are still available. If and when the arduino tries to be all things to all users then it will be in my opinion leaving the very users and market that made them so popular. That is not to say it's not nice to have a choice and the Due may indeed be a nice option to have for more demanding applications and projects, but I just know that once it's available many users will opt for a Due when the Uno would have been the better entry board for them. Every newcomers thinks their first board purchase will be their last board purchased and tend to up-sell themselves and make their learning journey that much harder then it had to me.

The rapidly developing AIM microcontroller market is exciting to see and the power they bring to the table is very impressive, but in my opinion it's not the best (or even a good) entry chip for newcomers looking to learn and gain experience in coding and electronic building skills.

Lefty

I agree completely, I bought my Demilanova ( or whatever the damn things are called ! ) in 2010, as an absolute newbie, with the intention of finally getting into micro programming.

I have learnt perhaps 5% of what it can do, and am learning every day. Why should I change?

I don't even want a board with a smd chip, as all my projects are for gizmos with embedded plug in chips.

I havn't even got into v1 of the ide yet, I am waiting for someone to do a version of Gavin Smiths wonderful " arduino cheat sheet" for the changes that are needed for v1.

I don't want arduino to get into the same race that celphones have, with stupid aps and games, where it is basically a phone to speak to somebody.

Rant over....

with my luck, the Due will probably get a release date announced tomorrow, since I just purchase a stack of Pi.

Hi,
It totally agree, it would be a shame to move too far from the the low cost, robust, hackability of a 328 DIP Package, I have done some fairly daft things with mine while learning and they are still able to chug away.

My biggest sketches only just push 10K and most of that is lookup tables or strings.

Having said that, it would be nice to have some single cycle 16 and 32 bit instructions.

Duane B

rcarduino.blogspot.com

Boffin1:
I havn't even got into v1 of the ide yet, I am waiting for someone to do a version of Gavin Smiths wonderful " arduino cheat sheet" for the changes that are needed for v1.

I only spent a minute perusing that cheat sheet, but I didn't see anything that needed to be changed for v1. At most there may be 1 or 2 very minor tweaks necessary to be 100% accurate.

( or whatever the damn things are called ! )

I can never spell it either, thank goodness there aren't many around these days and we can say "Uno" :slight_smile:

FWIW I just realised an easy way to remember it

Due-milan-ove

Due, as in the new board
milan as in the town
ove as in...um ove


Rob

Graynomad:

( or whatever the damn things are called ! )

I can never spell it either, thank goodness there aren't many around these days and we can say "Uno" :slight_smile:

FWIW I just realised an easy way to remember it

Due-milan-ove

Due, as in the new board
milan as in the town
ove as in...um ove


Rob

I thought we english speaking folks just agreed to call it the arduino 2009 board and leave it at that? :wink:

Yeah, there is that :slight_smile:


Rob

At most there may be 1 or 2 very minor tweaks necessary

Is there a post that actually describes what we need to know to move on to v1 ?

I only get the odd 20 minutes now and again for learning, and I tend to try and get my mind around tasks using IDE22 for now.

I havn't even had a chance to see what the difference is with uno, ( although I can remember the name ), as long as I can write stuff for a plug-in chip I am happy for now, though perhaps the Arduino world is passing me by while I learn the basics ........

I like lots of things about arduino, too many to list, but one thing that really gets my back up is too many updates to libraries and hardware, not pointing fingers but 16x2 lcd shields, how many post's are there asking for help, "I used the tutorial", "they gave me a web address for the library", ethernet shields with SD, without SD, pin 4 being used SD doesn't work & WProgram.h vs Arduino.h, who thought that one up on the toilet?

Just googled this "Due" thing, apparently it's when my tax's have to be in

No need to buy a new board, i stick with Arm9


Nintendo DS Technical Specifications
CPU Core Main Processor: ARM946E-S (Running at 67 MHz) Cache: 8 KB Instruction Cache, 4KB Data Cache TCM: 8KB Instruction, 4KB Data Sub Processor: ARM7TDMI (Running at 33 MHz)
Memory Main Memory: 4 MB (Debug version has 8 MB) ARM9/ARM7 Shared - 32KB (16KB x 2) ARM7 Internal RAM - 64 KB VRAM - 656 KB
LCD Display Size: 256 x 192 RGB Screens x 2
Display Colours: 262,144 colours
2D Graphics Engine Background - Maximum 4 layers Objects - Maximum of 128 3D Graphics Engine Geometric Transformation - Max 4 million vertex/sec Polygon Rate - Max 120,000 polygons/sec Pixel Fillrate - Max 30 million pixels/sec
Sound: 16 channel ADPCM/PCM (Max 8 channels can be set to PSG) Microphone input
Wireless Communication 802.11 Protocol
Input Device Touch Panel Direction Pad, A, B, X, Y, L, R buttons, Start, Select.
Power Save Sleep mode (WakeUp possible at set times or by wireless communication) Power save for 2D engine, rendering engine, geometry engine, LCD screen possible.

Boffin1:

At most there may be 1 or 2 very minor tweaks necessary

Is there a post that actually describes what we need to know to move on to v1 ?

I only get the odd 20 minutes now and again for learning, and I tend to try and get my mind around tasks using IDE22 for now.

I havn't even had a chance to see what the difference is with uno, ( although I can remember the name ), as long as I can write stuff for a plug-in chip I am happy for now, though perhaps the Arduino world is passing me by while I learn the basics ........

Well actually you really don't think you have to change that much in your sketches, just print statements and I2C commands, that have been updated, maybe some other stuff, I forget, and yes a published 'cheat/reminder list would have been a nice thing, but alas such is life. Also it's possible to have both version 22 and 1.0.1 installed at the same time into different folder directories and switch back and forth. One other change is lots of existing 3rd party libraries have to have a single line changed to include ardino.h Vs whatever was used before (Wprogram.h maybe ?). I have both installed and usually just use 22 on my existing sketches and just play with 1 for new sketches but haven't been all the active lately on writing new stuff.

Lefty

It's going to slow down in the next 12 months

We don't need more powerful processors just a better team of engineers to redesign their popular ARM chips for speed / better performance look at the A6 from apple.

Point is mobile devices fuel the groth eg samsung galaxy apple iphone etc.

but we're hitting a roadblock the GPU and i believe in the next 12 months we will see more progress on optimization on ARM to get more speed rather than adding more cores or increasing the frequency. and a lot more time on the GPU..

Thanks retrolefty, you have allayed my fears, and I do have 1.0.1 installed, I have been too busy to get out of my comfort 22 zone to try it.

I have got my printer going again so I will try making my own cheatsheet - for instance I spotted the new ( easier ) way of designating pullups.

It sounds like its not too hard. I will also try my new sketches on 1.0.1 and if I run into trouble I should be able to revert to 22 .

Point is mobile devices fuel the growth eg samsung galaxy apple iphone etc.

When one of our kids shows me their latest new "phone" I say " Wow, people are going to be so impressed when you answer their call on that phone ! " Hello - its primarily a mobile telephone.

And we started off with the Motorola " brick" and got smaller and smaller until there was a shell type phone the size of a matchbox.

Now we are back to a phone that is bigger ( albeit thinner ) than the old brick against the side of ones head :slight_smile:

I reckon Niel Armstrong must be chuckling up there, when we talk about we need more speed for our computers :slight_smile:

Warp factor 2 Scotty, beam me up ...

Performance has been a growing problem for the wildly successful Arduino platform. Many of us want to do things that simply can't be done with the current crop of 8 bit MCUs. For instance, a UAV controller is extremely hard to do in 8 bits, and it is a testament to the Ardu-Pilot guys that they have managed to squeeze as much out the the ATMega328 as they have. Also, ATMega's don't run full speed at 3.3 volts, but nearly every interesting new chip only supports 3.3 volt I/O - 5 volt is a thing of the past.

The newer ARM chips, for instance the Cortex M3 or M4, are not cell phone application processors like the A8. They are designed to be real time embedded controllers, just like the ATMega's were in their time. A M3 can execute code 30x as fast or more than an ATMega328 as a result of the 4x wider data path, C-compiler instruction set compatibility, DSP instrucitons, and internal pipelining. It has much more memory (512K FLASH, 64K SRAM). The M4 adds hardware floating point and memory up to 1MB FLASH and 256K SRAM. Using these would allow us to do much more complex tasks than we can do now, but in a similar form factor. The MBED platform is an example of this sort of approach using the Cortex M3. Use a M4 with a local toolchain, Arduino form factor, shields, and community, and I think you have a killer platform.

The great thing is that much of this complexity will be hidden, as it is now. Arduino is actually a C++ compiler. How many guys who responded to this thread are expert C++ programmers? Probably not many, me included, because there is no need to - the Arduino tools hide that from us so we can concentrate on the project, not on mundane programming details. The Arduino team will certainly do the same thing with the ARM processors, while enabling projects we haven't even thought of yet.

And if you really want to keep using the ATMega boards, don't worry - if you keep buying, they'll keep making!

Good point Mark.

As long as I dont have to go back to micro nursery school again !