NB is it time to expand out to other platforms ?

[seulater]

Duno yet, they told me its supposed to be out Q2

[Ridgeglider]

After watching this topic for a while, I thought I'd weigh in too... First, let me reiterste that the NB platform is really outstanding and keeps getting better. I have two points. The first is more general, the second is more of a description for a slimmed down product I'd find useful.

1) There was some previous discussion in this thread indicating that it might be productive to port the NB tools to an ARM platform. I think the ARM might be a good platform, but the main thing is that it is different from Freescale; a second source if you will. Don't get me wrong, the Coldfire products seem to work well. However, I'd really hate to see the NB offering suddenly cut off if Freescale ever decided to stop making the Coldfire 52xx cores. If there were ports to ARM (or other, TI for lo power?) I think it would sit well.

2) With respect to a smaller footprint device, I'd be interested in something that could log data from a serial port to SD, parse it, and make the data available via UDP or a TCP connection. A little IO would be nice, but not key. Sort of like the ModDEv70 kit, on one board without all the LEDs, Dip SW, DBs, voltage regulator, headers and connectors. Just maybe 10 io pins, the RJ45, an RTC, an SD memory socket, and a logic level serial port or two: one for an input stream to parse, one for debug. 3.3V input power.

[seulater]

First, let me reiterste that the NB platform is really outstanding and keeps getting better.

I agree 100%, which is why i am trying to push them to start thinking about other processors.
Personally, i don't give a hoot whats under the hood for a processor, and don't see what anyone would care. I look at it this way, a processor is the engine, and the software is the cab. all engines work on the same principal not much difference there except fuel economy, H.P. and Torq. The cab is where i spend most of my time, (I.E. software). when i start a new road trip (or project) i am going to be in the cab, and i want it to be as comfortable as possible.

N.B. has the most comfortable cab i have seen. Under the hood i have plenty of power.
SOooo..... who cares if one takes the cheery picker out, and rips out the Motorola engine and pops in a equal or better processor (engine) and then closes the hood. To the user sitting in the cab (software) will never know the difference, other that its faster and more fuel efficient.

In a nut shell, NB has the best cab, I.E. software, it would be nice to have different engines to choose from. After all, having a robust, reliable software is most important, which NB has.

Whats got me concerned is that rabbit is coming out with a 200MHZ processor in Q2 with Wi-FI on board (minus the radio of course). I dont want to see NB loose ground over this.

ITs late, but i hope you all get my drift.

[pbreed]

The new Rabbit part is interesting, but the WiFi does not do you much good on a bare chip. The cost of getting any custom design using
an intentional radiator FCC certified is going to be in the 30K+ range. So for volumes less than 10K a yr this is going to be problematic.
Has anyone seen any price info on the Rabbit 6K?

There is some really cool stuff coming and we intent to compete at every level. We have been working on the low end of our product line,
and we are now working on the high performance end of our product line. We won't have anything to show in Q2.
Q3 maybe, Q4 way cool stuff...

On the other end of the spectrum we are just about to start marketing the SBL2E dev kits, this is a really low cost part.
It has a lot fewer resources than the existing Netburner parts. I will be real interested in if our customers are as satisfied with this part as
they have been with our existing product. All our existing stuff has 8Mbytes of SDRAM, all the shipping single chip solutions have 64K or less.
This 8M buys us a lot of room to be generous with memory and let you have bigger stacks, network buffers etc....

With the single chip stack we don't have that room. I'd really appreciate the feedback on how things go with the SBL2Edev kits.
With dev kits the primary cost beyond the hardware is support. We expect the SBL2E to take a little more support
until we get all the expectations and bugs ironed out. Toward that end the new SBL2E dev kit is going to start out at $299.

The other experiment we are going to run with the SBL2E is to sell pre-programed bare chips. We are going to have a minimum
quantity of 100chips, but we will include a schematic design review for anyone wanting to use this option.

If this launch goes well we will branch our single chip stack into a wider offering of processors.
In a lot of ways I think this new offering is superior as as its easier to use for simple apps. It just doesn't have the wide
breadth of protocols (No SSL, No SNMP, No PPP) and the debugging solution is not fully fleshed out (yet).

[cbyrne]

Hi, we're anxiously awaiting the new high-end offering, assuming it is still in the plan. Would it be possible to get some technical information such as specific core part, signal pin-out, etc., for possible redesign of our carrier board which currently supports a 5234 and when might the modules be available?

Thanks,
Chuck

[pbreed]

The next part will be MCF54415 based.
It is industrial temp, runs at 200Mhz and has 64Mb of 200Mhz DDR2 ram.
It also has 16Mb of flash and both an off board (like the other parts) and a soldered
on the back side of the board near the ethernet chip micro sd card connector.
They can both be used.

It also has 14 bit A/D and 9 serial ports!

It has a completely separate boot flash so will be un-brickable.

I have one running on my desk right now.
It has three jumpers and an added resistor.

As soon as I finish making sure all the Ethernet stuff works the next board spin that will become public beta will go out to manufacturing. This should be publicly available around the end of the year.

[seulater]

It is industrial temp, runs at 200Mhz and has 64Mb of 200Mhz DDR2 ram.
It also has 16Mb of flash and both an off board

that's great but why so much ? will you offer lower sizes to keep cost down ?

[bbracken]

Paul,

Sounds good. It would be perfect for a prototype project I'm working on.... except for no video....

bb

[pbreed]

A correction, its 250Mhz not 200Mhz.
(An earlier version had industrial temp only go to 200, the current version goes to 250)
So the DDR runs with a real clock rate of 250 or effective of 500Mhz

The 64MBytes if DDR2 is basically the smallest DDR2 chip that is readily availible.
16M of flash is also where the sweet spot is in flash as well.

[pbreed]

Just released the no errors (I hope) version of this board to manufacturing to make
a couple of prototypes.

I also just checked into CVS the fully operational code set.

The code is close enough that I could beta it, but the long pole in the tent may be
Freescale.

The current MCF5441X has a nasty bus sharing errata with the CPU and Ethernet.
We just have received samples of a corrected version of this part without the errata. (Last week)
We don't have enough to do a real build, and I'm not sure when these corrected parts will be widely available.

This will be a fun part...