[sdiy] Atmel releases Studio6, STM32 new devices!

[KD KD]

2012/3/4, Eric Brombaugh <ebrombaugh1 at cox.net>:
>
> On Mar 4, 2012, at 7:40 AM, KD KD wrote:
>
>> It supports Cortex M4! Time for ST to do something...
>
> Looks nice. Now if Atmel would just sell a Cortex M4 part then maybe we
> could talk. The SAM4S16C appears to be the only one in the line and it's not
> available in the distribution channel yet. ST, Freescale, NXP and TI all
> have M4 parts for immediate delivery though.
>
> This does raise a good point though - ST doesn't provide their own free
> development tools for their ARM Cortex M microcontrollers, but rather
> vectors you off to 3rd-party products. These are either expensive
> general-purpose professional-quality tools like IAR and Keil, or else
> reduced functionality demo versions invariably based on Eclipse/GCC. Nothing
> against any of these, but it would be nice to have something as clean and
> well supported as the Atmel tools are reputed to be.
>
> Eric

Exactly my point to!...

Anyhow, ST have some neat devices coming, but it also ends diy on diy
level since
SDRAM interface are complicated PCB layout stuff and requiring 4-6 layers and
detailed engineering to work.One of the reasons i have been advocating
"internal"
xMbyte Dram in low'er end MCU's. :)

Translated lingo stuff from a ST representative:

1: 90nm for both F2 and F4, time release was delayed for F2 that's why F4
came so close to F2 release so we decided only dev and starter kits F4
superset F2 etc etc.

2.price difference are 10% between F2 and F4 not always consequently
displayed by retailers.

3. ART accelerator are not only a cache "Arbiter and fetch management"
part are logics that right code are in the cache when jumps are executed
Only way to test is to test for your self, test results are published by ST

5. STM32F103 Discovery kitten is a debugger programmer named ST-Link
low power version and F4 version is it version 2  who adds SWO i.e data trace.

7. DSP library in CMSIS foldern code supported by ARM,
universal for all Cortex M derivat.

8. SDRAM/DRAM planned in next version, time frame not decided.

KD