[fpc-devel] BBB / PRUS / M3 and fpc

[Michael Schnell]

On 12/03/2013 02:34 PM, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>  and that the memory provision is fairly meager, it might be more 
> trouble than it's worth.

The Propeller is so short on closely coupled RAM that even to be able to 
use a decent C compiler, someone implemented a "virtual CPU" interpreter 
(i.e. "ZPU" architecture) to be run by the propeller core and create 
code for this architecture by a gnu c compiler that is provided by same.

So in fact it seems a lot more appropriate to port fpc to ZPU than to 
the native propeller core.


ZPU is a "zero register" 32 bit CPU architecture (it only has an up to 
32 bit PC and an up to 32 Bit SP - less with memory space below 4 GB). 
Each instruction word is 8 bit wide. It is originally designed to be 
implemented in an FPGA, bus it also is excellent suited as a target for 
an interpreter.

The ZPU architecture description and the C compiler can be obtained 
here: http://opensource.zylin.com/zpu.htm

Infos on ZPU, including the Propeller virtual machine can be found t´in 
the mailing list zylin-zpu at zylin.com


-Michael