[fpc-devel] BlackFin

[Florian Klaempfl]

Michael Schnell schrieb:
> 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.

Coding the compiler part isn't that hard. I can do this, I did the
initial arm port within a few weeks. The more annoying part is doing the
debugging and find the things being broken.

If you're interested, start a wiki page with some information where to
get docs, tools, info about calling conventions etc.

> 
> 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
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