[[email protected]: Re: Arduino frustrations: C is not a higher-order language, and timing is not an optimization]

Oops, forgot to Cc.

----- Forwarded message from Kragen Javier Sitaker <[email protected]> -----

Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2012 02:27:52 -0500
From: Kragen Javier Sitaker <[email protected]>
To: Zooko O'Whielacronx <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Arduino frustrations: C is not a higher-order language, and
	timing is not an optimization
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14)

On Mon, Jan 02, 2012 at 10:05:45PM -0700, Zooko O'Whielacronx wrote:
> Here are some cool-sounding projects/products:
> 
> http://leaflabs.com/devices/
> 
> Integrated FPGA, and it claims that it does or will make them easy to use!

Neat!  "Oak" has a 250k-gate Spartan-3E.  Looks like vaporware though.  Also,
looks like Spartan-3E pricing still starts [above US$10][0], while AVR pricing
starts under US$1, and ATMega328 pricing just over US$2.  So I think it's a
different market from the Arduino, unless using the FPGA somehow drastically
reduces parts count.

[0]: http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/XC3S100E-4VQG100C/122-1479-ND/1091707

Their existing products sound pretty awesome though.  The Maple Native is a
72MHz ARM Cortex-M3 (!!) with 512K of Flash (!) and 64K of RAM (!) and an extra
1MB of RAM off-chip (!!!) and 106 I/O pins (!!!) for US$75; the chip is the
STMicroelectronics STM32F103ZE, [US$6.50 in bulk][1].  The Cortex-M3 is
probably the fastest processor out there that enables cycle-accurate timing;
see e.g.
<http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0337i/CHDIJAFG.html>.

[1]: http://search.digikey.com/us/en/products/STM32F103ZEH6/497-9037-ND/2035359

And they claim "Arduino compatibility" for their Maple board, but I'm dubious
that much existing Arduino code will compile for it, because they don't claim
that.

> http://leaflabs.com/2011/09/pymite/
> 
> Python! Python is the best language for beginners of all languages
> that I have tried.

I wonder why they're using PyMite if they have 1MB of RAM.

> http://www.bugblat.com/products/cor.html
> 
> (This one seems more for pros and less for beginners than the leaflabs one.)

Same chip though, looks like.  Unmaintained page, saying the Arduino is based
on the ATMega168.

> Oh, I see that the Arduino company has announced an ARM product:
> 
> http://arduino.cc/blog/2011/09/17/arduino-launches-new-products-in-maker-faire/

Nice.  I wonder why they chose the Atmel ARM chip instead of the
STMicroelectronics one or one of the NXP chips?  The NXP chips seem like a much
closer 32-bit competitor to the AVR8 line.

Kragen

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