[fpc-devel] BlackFin

[Michael Schnell]

Florian, Thanks a lot for discussing this !
> Well, this depends how good one wants to make such a port ...
>   
In this case the (first version of the) port does not need to be very 
"good" (in the sense of creating optimized code), but of course the 
compiler needs to produce correct code that performs what had been 
expressed in Pascal.

Do you think, it could be doable to create a not very optimized compiler 
? I would join the team, but as I'm new to compiler construction, I 
don't think I can start that project by myself.

The beauty of the Blackfin is that is extremely fast and offers an 
excellent price/performance relation. The chip I intend to use comes 
with two CPUs each clocked with 600 MHz. As the Blackfin can do single 
instruction / multiple data (e.g. four 8 bit adds or two 16 bit 
multiply/adds in a cycle <per CPU>) and provides a zero-overhead looping 
mechanism the performance per CPU is (depending on the Application) like 
a 800 to 1500 MHz ARM. And the dual core chip costs about $20. Of course 
there are several smaller Blackfin chips. So IMHO this is an excellent 
processor for embedded use. And thus an interesting target for an FP port.


> As far as I have seen the BlackFin has two cores: an arm like risc core
> and a dsp.
>   

Not really. It's a DSP (predecessor of the Blackfin was the "Shark" DSP 
line) that has been enhanced by features necessary for standard CPUs.

-Michael