Blackfin+ alternatives - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: blueskull
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 08, 2019, 08:53:56 pm
content: I know I've asked this question two years ago, but technology evolves over time, and now it's the time for me to ask it again.Is there an MCU that can do 400MMACS at 32-bit with USB high speed w/PHY in 2019 that runs bare metal or FreeRTOS?Also as a bonus, I'll prefer not to buy from American brands due to fear of China-US war escalates and my supply chain threatened. No Freescale, no ADI, no TI.Something from ST or Asia are appreciated, but I know nothing about them, so any recommendations are appreciated.I'm open to all packages, including BGA/CSP. Thanks.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 04:37:28 am
content: What are the use cases? Is there a reason you are doing DSP in software rather than using an FPGA? IMO if you are looking for raw computational performance in a MCU you are looking in the wrong place.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 06:19:58 am
content: I don't think Xilinx will be embargoed from China any time soon because almost half their sales are to China and it would be a suicide move. Realistically though all FPGAs are interchangeable. I use the USB3343 PHY plus an open source controller, which is currently still the cheapest USB HS solution I know of. The spartan 6 is still impossible to beat in price and can do at least 800MMACs at 32 bits wide (4 multipliers needed per 32 bit multiply, and there are 16 in total for 4 32x32 multiplies, Fmax of 200MHz is easy to achieve).

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 07:30:49 am
content: Freescale is owned by NXP nowadays.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 07:32:01 am
content: http://jorisvr.nl/article/usb-serialThere is an off-by-one bug though that shows up on some vendors (it depends on BRAM write-to-read latency) which I have fixed in my copy:https://github.com/gabriel-tenma-white/sdr4/tree/master/firmware/third_party/fpga-usb-serial-20131205You also need the ULPI <-> UTMI adapter here:http://vr5.narod.ru/fpga/usb/index.htmlExample usage tying the two modules together here:https://github.com/gabriel-tenma-white/sdr4/blob/master/firmware/ulpi_serial.vhdI have benchmarked this and can get around 40MB/s total throughput.

author: ali_asadzadeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 08:37:10 am
content: QuoteGowin is Ok, Talk to them directly and they would respond. also the prices are good, you can get ARORA family around 3-5 USD!

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 11:44:25 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on August 09, 2019, 07:30:49 am... and datasheets made by Motorola in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s are serious trouble nowadays. Freescale got them from Motorola and kept the internal customer care service alive somehow (e.g. they paid guys to make digital copies of the paper documentation), but now ... it seems that guys at NXP are dropping everything.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 01:26:51 pm
content: A Cortex-M7-based MCU with DSP extensions may get you this. They state that DSP extensions include single-cycle 32-bit MAC, so an MCU supporting this and running at >= 400MHz should do (although I would expect a throughput that would be a little less predictable than with the Blackfins because this is usually heavily pipelined with possible cases in which it would stall...)https://developer.arm.com/ip-products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m7Maybe the STM32H7 line?

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 09:39:55 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on August 09, 2019, 07:42:05 amThe chips say NXP. I don't think it is a merger. Besides that NXP has R&D centers in China where they develop semiconductors.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 09, 2019, 10:41:56 pm
content: Freescale effectively is part of NXP now. AFAIK, Freescale as a separate entity doesn't exist anymore.Even its web site redirects to NXP's one. Try:http://www.freescale.com/

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2019, 09:54:47 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on August 10, 2019, 12:53:56 amOwnership != location of management.What would shareholders value more? Extra business or Trump's next crazy idea?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2019, 10:33:51 pm
content: What about one of the embedded Linux chips like Mediatek or Allwinner?

author: funkathustra
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 04:11:29 am
content: I'm no expert, but Ithinkthe NEON extensions found in the Cortex-A CPUs can do 1 MMAC / cycle, so if you need 400 MMACs, go get a 500 MHz Atmel SAMA5 or similar, and program it using the bare-metal API. I don't think the Cortex-M stuff (even the M7) has single-cycle floating-point MAC, and I'm not sure the ARM9 can do MMACs very fast, either.There are a ton of ARM application processors out of China/Taiwan; some of these have integrated SDRAM. Almost all will boot from simple SPI flash chips in addition to faster parallel NAND flash and eMMC / SD cards. I think the AllWinner stuff is fairly easy to get going, and while I don't believe it has an official bare-metal SDK, it shouldn't be hard to get going by basing your code on u-boot/Linux sources.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 16, 2019, 08:53:03 am
content: U-boot is so sophisticated nowadays that you can use it as a bare-metal environment easely.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 23, 2019, 08:42:48 pm
content: So did you select alternatives yet?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 24, 2019, 02:49:26 pm
content: Sounds ambitious. Good luck!

author: laugensalm
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 25, 2019, 03:37:47 pm
content: Very good question, actually. From my knowledge, there's no Cortex >M4 getting close to the dual MAC of a BF53x, but I haven't really tried in the last 3 years. I've committed some heresy and re-implemented some legacy in an FPGA so that I could reuse some of the old NISA assembly. The big question mark is the USB interface, but you seem to have found a way (which I'd be interested in, feel free to keep us up to date!). There are also hacks using Xilinx' MGTs for USB3.0, but this is dangerous matter concerning downward 2.0 compatibility.As you mention the ZPU, this is funny, in my design it serves as the main processor architecture (in a pipelined revamp) to feed the 'DSP' applets. But I'm a bit sceptic that you'd get the performance out of a MachXO3 WRT the non-available hard DSP units on this platform, but maybe ECP5 could be your next step.

author: lucazader
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 30, 2019, 12:29:48 am
content: I'm not very experienced with DSP work.However the latest in the stm32h7 line is a 480MHz M7 core with a 240MHz M4.So maybe with the combination of both cores, or using the m7 as the dsp core,a dnthe m4 as the mcu core this might be able to hit your target 400MMACs.?I dont really know though!Or maybe something like the Sipeed MAIX whch is based on the Kendryte K210. Dual core Risc-V at 400+ MHz..?Though i don't know how good it would be with dsp instructions etc.Hope you can find a good solution.If you do please let us know how you got on.

author: PCB.Wiz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 30, 2019, 01:48:08 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on August 24, 2019, 08:31:08 amIf that does not work, I see thishttps://www.aessent.com/news/launch-of-aes220buses a CY7C68013A-56BAXC, which comes in a 5x5 BGA, so it seems compact.