Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2004 08:56:16 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Gary Corcoran <garycor@comcast.net> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD or other BSD for no-MMU ARM processor ? Message-ID: <200406160856.16319.wes@softweyr.com> In-Reply-To: <40CF44FB.6030709@comcast.net> References: <40CDFD39.3090309@comcast.net> <200406151116.36832.wes@softweyr.com> <40CF44FB.6030709@comcast.net>
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On Tuesday 15 June 2004 11:50, Gary Corcoran wrote: > Wes Peters wrote: > > On Monday 14 June 2004 12:32 pm, Gary Corcoran wrote: > >>Does anyone know if there is a port of FreeBSD, or any of the > >>other BSDs (e.g. NetBSD) for that matter, which will run on an > >>ARM processor which does NOT have an MMU (Memory Management Unit)? > > > > No, and there's not likely to be one anytime soon (unless you do it). > > Thanks for the definitive reply. We don't have enough resources for > our work as it is, so no, we're not going to do it - we need something > already available. > > > NetBSD has ports for a couple of ARM920T designs, which do have an MMU. > > (I think they've recently popped a port for the Cogent CSB337, based on > > the Atmel chip.) > > > > The general feeling seems to be that without an MMU and the added > > features of memory protection it provides, the heavyweight > > process-oriented UNIX kernel doesn't really offer much advantage over a > > lighter-weight solution like RTEMS or eCos. The uClinux gang disagrees > > with this assessment, obviously, so you do have that choice as well. > > Thanks for the pointers. My boss (and our customer) has mentioned eCos, > so we'll be looking into that. RTEMS I hadn't heard of - I'll have to > check into that too. But since I like, and am somewhat familiar with, > *BSD, I thought I'd ask if that might be an option... You'll like RTEMS, it's the BSD of RTOSes. The community support is great and Joel Sherrill, the head honcho there, is very responsive to "customer" input. OARCorp offers all sorts of contract help as well. In case you haven't found it (not likely), see: http://www.oarcorp.com/ eCos is also very good, and perhaps a bit more polished due to it's Cygnus Support and Red Hat parentage. I'm noticing more and more eval boards and development systems for 32-bit embedded cpus that come with eCos. If you're looking for a low-cost ARM7 solution, the Atmel EVB40 boards might be of interest. DigiKey carries the EVB40A, with a 66MHz ARM7TDMI chip (Ateml AT91R40008), which is directly supported by eCos, see: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ecos/boards/at91eb40a.html Both eCos and RTEMS use GCC cross-compilers for devlopment, so you'll be able to stick with FreeBSD as your workstation platform. In fact, the coupling between FreeBSD and RTEMS is very close; see /usr/ports/devel/ on your favorite FreeBSD system, where you will find: arm-rtems-binutils i386- -g77 i960- -gcc m68k- -gdb mips- -objc powerpc- sh- sparc- Installing the arm binutils (linker, assembler, etc), gcc and gdb ports will give you a complete RTEMS-arm development environment on your FreeBSD system with a minimum of fuss and bother. The other two ports will provide you with a Fortran-77 and Objective-C compiler, if you need those. Am I making your choice any easier? ;^) Please let me know how your project goes. -- Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket? Wes Peters wes@softweyr.com
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