Author Topic: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?  (Read 10085 times)

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Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #25 on: March 24, 2018, 02:17:08 pm »
Funny, that this topic still comes up every few years. Unfortunately, Analog Devices has run puzzling strategies with their tools, eventually, it seems they left the OpenSource stuff orphaned. The irony is, that the old VDSP very much bases on an old GCC port (yes indeed, ADI never much cared about GPL).
You might find some old distributions of the ICEbear (classic) JTAG software (bfemu/gdbproxy) that work with any FT2232 adapter (if you try hard enough).
On a side note: the ICEbearPlus JTAG is still available, but not 'low cost' in the sense of 'below 100 USD', and support for HW debugging is stripped (flash programming only).
Other than that, fully functional gcc distributions are still maintained and perform (IMHO) better than the mutilated ELF VDSP++ variants.
I think that pure Digital Signal Processors started their sunset at the same time the opensource was being adopted by big semi manufacturers in the mid 2000s. Nowadays there is a variety of offers, with AD more or less stuck in the past, NXP and TI having moved forward in certain spots of their product line.
For me I have some audio based projects in mind that might need dedicated digital signal processors.
Yes, you are using the correct tool for the job. True DSPs are unbeatable for signal processing.

If you are still looking for options, I am very familiar with the C674x family of floating point DSPs, where you can start for somewhat less money: the C6748 LCDK is $195.00, but the advantage is that it can be programmed with a cheaper FTDI-based XDS100v2 (clones everywhere) or a bit faster XDS110 (there is the official version and a clone called XDS110Lite). The mainstream IDE (Code Composer Studio) still actively supports it and costs nothing. There is even a SDK still supported.
I do have a few sample chips of TMS320VC5509A. Older series than C674x but should work reasonably well.

I still would like to keep my options open though. For the current audio processing workload I am evaluating five options:
* Blackfin (ADSP-BF531)
* SigmaDSP (ADAU1761)
* TMS320C55xx series (TMS320VC5509A)
* Cortex-M4F (STM32F405RGT6)
* Cortex-M7F (STM32F722RET6)
Ah, the VC5509 is an old friend... I used it several years ago and, despite it has half of the BF531 clock speed, it has some interesting peripherals such as SD card and USB slave - all suited to the MP3 players of yore. Perhaps the old audio libraries are still available on ti.com.

The nice thing is that it is still supported by the same tools I mentioned before - although with the newer versions of the IDE it requires a bit more effort to build the ancient example projects.

The Cortex Ms are very tempting due to the modern support and low cost tools, but if you need serious filtering the DSPs will be a better option. Actually, depending on what you need, the options above may not be even enough to get the job done. However, we have to make the best with what we have.

One additional detail I forgot to mention is that there is a version of the C6748 DSP I mentioned before with an ARM9 core in it - useful to run full Linux (not uCLinux). The benefit is they are pin to pin compatible.
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Offline technixTopic starter

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #26 on: March 24, 2018, 03:32:20 pm »
Ah, the VC5509 is an old friend... I used it several years ago and, despite it has half of the BF531 clock speed, it has some interesting peripherals such as SD card and USB slave - all suited to the MP3 players of yore. Perhaps the old audio libraries are still available on ti.com.
This actually makes it an interesting option for a standalone DSP project, instead of being part of a MCU-controlled system.
The nice thing is that it is still supported by the same tools I mentioned before - although with the newer versions of the IDE it requires a bit more effort to build the ancient example projects.
As long as it works with the free CCS 6.2, I am okay with a bit of digging in the setup. I dug my own ARM toolchain anyway.
The Cortex Ms are very tempting due to the modern support and low cost tools, but if you need serious filtering the DSPs will be a better option. Actually, depending on what you need, the options above may not be even enough to get the job done. However, we have to make the best with what we have.
So what kind of DSP do I need if I want to do serious filtering? At what sample rate and word size you are talking about?
One additional detail I forgot to mention is that there is a version of the C6748 DSP I mentioned before with an ARM9 core in it - useful to run full Linux (not uCLinux). The benefit is they are pin to pin compatible.
I have found that - part of OMAP line. I am not yet ready to design my own boards with big BGA packages like that now though.
 

Offline bson

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #27 on: March 24, 2018, 11:59:45 pm »
The Cortex Ms are very tempting due to the modern support and low cost tools, but if you need serious filtering the DSPs will be a better option.
For audio I'm sure the CM4/CM7 will do perfectly fine with their fixed-point SIMD instructions - and he gets a competent application processor with many excellent sources and varieties to boot.  Unless it's going to be doing something unusually complex.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #28 on: March 25, 2018, 01:25:36 am »
The Cortex Ms are very tempting due to the modern support and low cost tools, but if you need serious filtering the DSPs will be a better option. Actually, depending on what you need, the options above may not be even enough to get the job done. However, we have to make the best with what we have.
So what kind of DSP do I need if I want to do serious filtering? At what sample rate and word size you are talking about?
For regular stereo 14 or 16-bit audio from 22 to 44.1kHz, the fixed point options you are considering where quite enough for a number of filters and effects. I can't precisely recall all the nitty gritty details, but IIRC I was able to add five-six band equalizer with room for echo, chorus and reverb, but there was a tradeoff between the equalizer bands, the effects depth and the auxiliary functions (USB, SD card, etc.). The BIOS RTOS helped a lot balancing these tradeoffs - adding or removing functions (threads) was easy.

BTW, I found some of the libraries for this device - here

One additional detail I forgot to mention is that there is a version of the C6748 DSP I mentioned before with an ARM9 core in it - useful to run full Linux (not uCLinux). The benefit is they are pin to pin compatible.
I have found that - part of OMAP line. I am not yet ready to design my own boards with big BGA packages like that now though.
Yeah, I forgot that. The BGA is the Achilles' heal of these more advanced processors.

For audio I'm sure the CM4/CM7 will do perfectly fine with their fixed-point SIMD instructions - and he gets a competent application processor with many excellent sources and varieties to boot.  Unless it's going to be doing something unusually complex.
bson, talking "For Audio" is too generic of a statement - the level of complexity can increase quickly depending on what you want to achieve, from a simple lowpass filter to an adaptive echo cancellation, plethora of effects, multichannel, high sample rate...

I've considered this path for DSP effect, interpolation and sigma delta modulation for my from-scratch sigma delta DAC project, and the result is DSP is better.
CM7 is great, but not as good as BlackFin+, even when processing 32-bit values. CM7 is better than classic BlackFin DSPs when dealing with 32-bit MACs since the old chips don't have single cycle 32*32+72 support.

Most CM7 don't run at 400MHz frequency like those BlackFin chips (spare iMXRT and 416MHz STM32), and they don't have modulus addressing mode, which is a big set back for FIT filters. Also, they don't have bit reversal addressing mode, which is offered in BlackFin DAG.
My experience with Cortex cores is very similar. Although Cortex cores can scale much better (a Cortex A can go much higher in speed), much of the raw performance gained in MAC speed is reduced when trying to resolve the more complex addressing modes.

I've also evaluated TI parts, but TI single chip DSP parts (not those needing an external RAM) don't have high speed USB, which is crucial to me.
Did you evaluate C2000 DSPs? They would be quite slower in performance.
Vbe - vídeo blog eletrônico http://videos.vbeletronico.com

Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline bson

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #29 on: March 25, 2018, 10:19:31 pm »
bson, talking "For Audio" is too generic of a statement - the level of complexity can increase quickly depending on what you want to achieve, from a simple lowpass filter to an adaptive echo cancellation, plethora of effects, multichannel, high sample rate...
Yeah, and when I wrote that post it was initially much longer, but I removed all the qualifiers and excess information.  Clearly a 400MHz DSP is going to be a more capable signal processor than, perhaps effectively, an 80MHz CM7.  But an FPGA is going to be more capable than a DSP... so... it's really more about weighing computational complexity vs gun caliber.  Which of course only states the obvious so isn't particularly meaningful.
 
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Offline technixTopic starter

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #30 on: March 27, 2018, 03:00:13 am »
bson, talking "For Audio" is too generic of a statement - the level of complexity can increase quickly depending on what you want to achieve, from a simple lowpass filter to an adaptive echo cancellation, plethora of effects, multichannel, high sample rate...
Yeah, and when I wrote that post it was initially much longer, but I removed all the qualifiers and excess information.  Clearly a 400MHz DSP is going to be a more capable signal processor than, perhaps effectively, an 80MHz CM7.  But an FPGA is going to be more capable than a DSP... so... it's really more about weighing computational complexity vs gun caliber.  Which of course only states the obvious so isn't particularly meaningful.
The CM7 I was looking at (STM32F722RET6) runs at 216MHz and the CM4 (STM32F405RGT6) runs at 168MHz. I don't know if this makes any difference when comparing to the DSP's.

Among the DSP's, how good are those SigmaDSP parts like ADAU1761 and ADAU1701?
 

Offline bson

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #31 on: March 27, 2018, 06:10:11 am »
The CM7 I was looking at (STM32F722RET6) runs at 216MHz and the CM4 (STM32F405RGT6) runs at 168MHz.

Perhaps he left a zero.
No, I didn't; these devices don't have an L1 cache (though it's optional on the CM7, not sure if ST offers one?) so unless you execute out of SRAM the simple read-ahead single row flash accelerators used are not going to keep up and there will be wait states.
« Last Edit: March 27, 2018, 06:13:36 am by bson »
 

Offline bson

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #32 on: March 27, 2018, 06:15:55 am »
No chip will perform well if the data set and coeff set are not stored in L1/L2/TCM.
Well, hence my downrating. 
 

Offline bson

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #33 on: March 27, 2018, 06:18:00 am »
Looks like the STM32F7x2 does have the L1 cache though.  That should make a difference.
 

Offline technixTopic starter

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #34 on: March 27, 2018, 10:21:05 am »
The CM7 I was looking at (STM32F722RET6) runs at 216MHz and the CM4 (STM32F405RGT6) runs at 168MHz.

Perhaps he left a zero.
No, I didn't; these devices don't have an L1 cache (though it's optional on the CM7, not sure if ST offers one?) so unless you execute out of SRAM the simple read-ahead single row flash accelerators used are not going to keep up and there will be wait states.
The STM32F722RE chip has L1 code and data cache, as well as 1-cycle SRAM access.
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #35 on: March 27, 2018, 07:17:43 pm »
Similar story with the TMS320VC5509A: it does not have cache, but it has both single and dual access single-cycle internal SRAM. These memory banks can be banded together with the DMA channels to transfer data in and out of the device (external SDRAM, serial ports) without wait states from the CPU perspective.

A curiosity about the Flash-based CM cores mentioned: do they run single cycle? If Wikipedia is correct, only the M7 has a possibility of having cache and none has TCM. In this case, the partitioning of the system would require critical code to be in SRAM instead of Flash.

For the VC5509A is a bit of a similar thing: since the device has no Flash, the code and constant data must be copied to the single access SRAM at boot time but, once it is there, everything is single cycle. You would use the dual access SRAM for data.

Vbe - vídeo blog eletrônico http://videos.vbeletronico.com

Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline technixTopic starter

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Re: Is there any low cost Blackfin ICE/ISP tool?
« Reply #36 on: March 27, 2018, 07:53:30 pm »
A curiosity about the Flash-based CM cores mentioned: do they run single cycle? If Wikipedia is correct, only the M7 has a possibility of having cache and none has TCM. In this case, the partitioning of the system would require critical code to be in SRAM instead of Flash.
AFAIK:

STM32F405RG:
* 64kB of data-only TCM that is not accessible by either DMA or instruction fetch
* 128kB of standard SRAM
* both TCM and SRAM can run single cycle.

STM32F722RE:
* 64kB of data TCM that cannot fetch instructions but can be accessed by DMA
* 16kB of instruction TCM that is not accessible by DMA
* 192kB of standard SRAM
* Memory-mapped QSPI interface
* 8kB instruction cache, 8kB data cache, both applies when instruction and data access from Flash through its AXIM address space, from standard SRAM or memory-mapped QSPI.
* TCM, SRAM and cache all run single cycle.
 


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