Standard C++ for the win « LeafLabs Garden

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Standard C++ for the win

(7 posts) (4 voices)

Started 4 years ago by maniacbug
Latest reply from gbulmer

maniacbug
Member
Just got a Maple Native after spending the last year working with Arduino. So happy to be able to use standard c++. I just about fell out of my chair with joy being able to run this:
```
  vector<string> v;
  v.push_back("Hello");
  v.push_back("world");
  v.push_back("std C++ FTW!!!");

  copy(v.begin(),v.end(),ostream_iterator<string>(cout,"\n"));
```
Of course, that comes with a wee bit of a penalty :) Obviously some will hate this, but to me it means the shackles of avr8 are off!
```
$ arm-none-eabi-size out/mix/stdcpptest.elf
   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
  68836    4312    2704   75852   1284c out/mix/stdcpptest.elf
```
Along the way I noticed a handful of unimplemented syscalls, _getpid, _kill, and _exit. Also this doesn't work from PDE files, only CPP files, because the IDE tacks on WProgram.h to the front which has #defines which conflict with stdlib.
Posted 4 years ago #
robodude666
Member

Now the question is, what will you do with the other ~440kB of FLASH?

Posted 4 years ago #
poslathian
LeafLabs

just wait until we get to 1MB ;)

We built Maple from the command line first, and added the IDE later, so underneath the hood are real standard tools that are still usable (actually more so...) outside the IDE.

We absolutely hate IDE lock-in, or proprietary environments that dont play nicely with the standard tools of the programming community. A lot of vendors act as though because they are selling hardware, their customers wont miss linux support, have never heard of Make, and will almost certainly never have any reason to do anything not directly supported by the IDE.

We're glad you like it!

That said the IDE has some annoying inferiorities to the command line, such as the WProgram.h issue you enumerated. Were working on improving the IDE build system which should take care of bits and pieces like that and change the IDE build system (currently java) to be the same as the command line toolchain (make). There is plenty of work to do on the preprocessor as well.

Posted 4 years ago #
maniacbug
Member

> Now the question is, what will you do with the other ~440kB of FLASH?

Time will tell :) For me, this is just the time for learning what this baby can do.

This Maple Native board occupies an interesting places in the computing spectrum. It lies somewhere between an AVR8 and a phone. I was thinking about a replacement for my Apple TV, but that seems just a bit outside Cortex-M3 power. A web streaming audio player? Probably right in the sweet spot. NAS controller? Maybe, if I can cram uclinux on it.

Anyway for now I'll just be happy to get the sd card going.

> That said the IDE has some annoying inferiorities to the command line

Indeed. And tacking on an ENTIRE main function (!?!) Anyway one thing I learned from Arduino was to always release code that works with the IDE because the platform fulfills the needs of many people without ever requiring a command shell, and there's no sense in excluding those people from using your stuff.

Posted 4 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

maniacbug - I don't want to distract you (too much) from Maple, but you could probably make all of those projects with a RaspberryPi:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/

It runs 'proper' Linux, has real video out, Ethernet, and runs at 700MHz, so not too far from an Apple TV.
Their aim is $25, so not too expensive for experiments.

Just to be clear, RaspeberryPi isn't on sale yet, but they have an initial batch available soon.
I have no commercial relationship with RaspeberryPi

Posted 4 years ago #
poslathian
LeafLabs

rasberryPi should be cool. However, I think it will be a while before stock linux setups replace MCUs for hardware - for cost, performance, and real-time guarantee reasons. Cost doesnt really come in to play in the devboard space, because most of the cost of the device is PCB/assembly/test/dev/packaging, not the MCU. For commercial prototyping, the difference between a 1$ MCU, a 5$ MCU, and a 15$ broadcom arm9 can be huge.

I imagine that even at 700MHz, there are some applications where the MCU will blow the rasberryPi away, just because of overhead. Further still, try bitbanging pwm - or any other hard real time protocol - under linux, wont be easy.

Personally, I see the future as combining standard procs with parallel hardware, like FPGAs. The proc can give you the OS, high level languages like python, standard libraries, file systems, sockets, etc. etc. and the coprocessor gives you your DSP, hard real time logic, pwm, gpio, etc. etc.

Thanks to myHDL, an all python environment for FPGA+Software codevelopment (aka hardware software codevelopment) running under linux or pymite is definitely a near-term possibility.

Posted 4 years ago #
gbulmer
Moderator

poslathian - <>... I imagine that even at 700MHz, there are some applications where the MCU will blow the rasberryPi away, just because of overhead. </>

There is interest in using the 700MHz, $25 RaspeberryPi without Linux, in which case, NO, there would be no application where a 72MHz MCU, or even 168MHz MCU will blow it away. There are several boards being designed to give access to its existing hardware I/O, or give it low-cost (sub $10) extended I/O, which may hasten those software developments.

Yes, there is an enormous range of stuff that might THEORETICALLY be done by combining different types of hardware. That has always been the case.
I'm still waiting to see the LeafLabs offering, but several others are making progress. e.g.
http://papilio.cc/
http://www.xess.com/

IMHO, the obstacle to using combined hardware, including MCU+FPGA is the software tools and technology, not the hardware.
The RaspeberryPi has onboard DSP and GPU, but that is constrained by Broadcom proprietary technology and licensing, so it could offer even more.

Hopefully ARM's efforts will cause some progress to be made.

Posted 4 years ago #

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