[fpc-devel] Freepascal in microcontrollers

[Michael Schnell]

Jeff Duntemann wrote:
> This is very blue-sky, 
FPGA processors are used a lot in embedded projects (though of course 
usually with programming in C). As well Altera as Xilinx have µCLinux 
for their processors (full Linux to come very soon) These are the 
"primary" FPGA companies, but there are several other, too, that also 
have 32 bit processors (and Linux) for their chips.

Because of the very versatile usability of such projects (and dropping 
hardware prices) they increasingly gain acceptance in the market. Of 
course there are lots of SDKs, OEM / prototyping boards etc to play 
with, so you don't need to build any hardware for starting.
> but it would be an interesting enhancement to Lazarus to target ARM or 
> Atmel AVR CPUs in the manner of the Processing language/IDE:
Lazarus already can create ARM programs (as well for Linux as for 
WinCE). I did a (very basic) WinCE test and my program did run as 
expected as of the first upload without any debugging. As the NIOS 
instruction set is quite similar to ARM (thus dissimilar to x86) I think 
it's a viable task to do a NIOS port. And _if_ starting a port for 
embedded use at all, I would do it on a technology that is likely do be 
one of the winners in that world.

-Michael
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