600MHz controller board, Teensy 4.0, $20

[Winfield Hill]

Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Arie de Muynck]

On 2019-08-07 18:28, Winfield Hill wrote:

Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.

The MSP430 claims 4 ns resolution:
http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/slay029/slay029.pdf
The STM32F3x4 seems to have 217ps resolution timers:
https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32f334.html

Maybe combining 2 timer outputs with a high-speed gate can give short
pulses?

Arie

 

[Arie de Muynck]

On 2019-08-07 18:28, Winfield Hill wrote:

Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.

The MSP430 claims 4 ns resolution:
http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/slay029/slay029.pdf
The STM32F3x4 seems to have 217ps resolution timers:
https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32f334.html

Combine 2 timer outputs with a high-speed gate for short pulses?

Arie

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

onsdag den 7. august 2019 kl. 23.06.31 UTC+2 skrev Winfield Hill:

Arie de Muynck wrote...

On 2019-08-07 18:28, Winfield Hill wrote:
Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.

The MSP430 claims 4 ns resolution:
http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/slay029/slay029.pdf
The STM32F3x4 seems to have 217ps resolution timers:
https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32f334.html

Paul Stoffregen's new board is great, but maybe
for my pulse-generator idea, one of these other
processors on an evaluation board would be better.
I've plopped an STM32F chip down on some of my
other PCB projects. That's a pretty nice series.

Maybe combining 2 timer outputs with a high-speed
gate can give short pulses?

Dunno, sounds painful.

any and all pulses you can imagine:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mojo-v3-FPGA-Development-Board/331729280984

 

[Winfield Hill]

Arie de Muynck wrote...

On 2019-08-07 18:28, Winfield Hill wrote:
Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.

The MSP430 claims 4 ns resolution:
http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/slay029/slay029.pdf
The STM32F3x4 seems to have 217ps resolution timers:
https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32f334.html

Paul Stoffregen's new board is great, but maybe
for my pulse-generator idea, one of these other
processors on an evaluation board would be better.
I've plopped an STM32F chip down on some of my
other PCB projects. That's a pretty nice series.

Maybe combining 2 timer outputs with a high-speed
gate can give short pulses?

Dunno, sounds painful.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Rick C]

On Wednesday, August 7, 2019 at 5:06:31 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:

Arie de Muynck wrote...

On 2019-08-07 18:28, Winfield Hill wrote:
Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.

The MSP430 claims 4 ns resolution:
http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/slay029/slay029.pdf
The STM32F3x4 seems to have 217ps resolution timers:
https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32f334.html

Paul Stoffregen's new board is great, but maybe
for my pulse-generator idea, one of these other
processors on an evaluation board would be better.
I've plopped an STM32F chip down on some of my
other PCB projects. That's a pretty nice series.

Maybe combining 2 timer outputs with a high-speed
gate can give short pulses?

Dunno, sounds painful.

Trying to get an MCU to provide high resolution pulses sounds painful to me. Why not use one of the many low cost FPGA boards available now. For not a whole lot more than the Teensy 4.0 board, you can get a FPGA board on a similar form factor.

FPGAs often have PLLs and can run quite high clock rates internally and with SERDES can get very high bit rates on I/Os.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[boB]

On Wed, 7 Aug 2019 22:14:46 +0200, Arie de Muynck
<no.spam@no.spam.org> wrote:

On 2019-08-07 18:28, Winfield Hill wrote:
Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.



The MSP430 claims 4 ns resolution:
http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/slay029/slay029.pdf
The STM32F3x4 seems to have 217ps resolution timers:
https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32f334.html

Maybe combining 2 timer outputs with a high-speed gate can give short
pulses?

Arie

Yes, I have thought about this this as well. One thing you can do is
to combine 2+ timer outputs for creating a higher resolution DC
voltage but creating the shorter pulse might take a little more work.
I haven't thought about that very hard but should work about as well
as the STM32F334 method that uses a delay line IIRC.

NXP LPC series uses a method where they have a combination of 16
different pulses that average out to a higher resolution PWM signal
over time which works OK maybe but just not the same as a real HRPWM
generator.

Must be more says to skin the cat instead of having to have a 5GHz
clocked timer.

 

[Tim Williams]

Someone should be able to port Doom to Arduino and have it run on that.
Just add button inputs and LCD display (and optionally, audio output).

Tim

--
Seven Transistor Labs, LLC
Electrical Engineering Consultation and Design
Website: https://www.seventransistorlabs.com/

"Winfield Hill" <winfieldhill@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:qieu7b0v51@drn.newsguy.com...

Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Wed, 7 Aug 2019 14:26:59 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Lasse
Langwadt Christensen <langwadt@fonz.dk> wrote in
<a50cd503-9601-4219-9a4f-73314724817b@googlegroups.com>:

any and all pulses you can imagine:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mojo-v3-FPGA-Development-Board/331729280984

Nice!
And cheap.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 07/08/19 17:28, Winfield Hill wrote:

Hardworking uP genius, Paul Stoffregen, has
introduced a new 600MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7
controller board, in a compact 1.4 by 0.7-
inch Teensy form factor (like Teensy 3.2).

https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy40.html

I imagine running one at 500MHz, and making
perfect 2.0 ns-resolution pulse generators.
Paul Stoffregen wrote and maintains the
Arduino time library, so with his updated
code it should be easy to write a program,
make it work. First maybe gotta read NXP's
3637-page i.MX RT1062 reference manual. Or
maybe the 111-page datasheet will do. Oops,
there I learned the fastest hardware timer
outputs are 20x slower. Oh well.

If I wanted to generate an arbitrary bitstream
in software (as opposed to an FPGA), I'd use
a *hard* realtime multicore processor with up
to 32 cores. Key principles: simply dedicate
one core to an i/o port, no interrupts, no caches,
excellent inter-core comms hardware *and* software.
The latter is missing from everything else.

I "kicked the tyres" to see if the hardware+software
worked. It did, and *everything* was *remarkably*
easy. There were no unpleasant surprises, nor 1000
page manuals, thank God.

Key points:
- xCORE processor (buy them at DigiKey)
- one of the 32:1 SERDES outputs giving 2ns pulse
width
- feed the SERDES output from one core
- use other cores for USB/ethernet/front panel etc
- core will stop and wait for the first of input
X or output Y or message in or message out or
timeout - and resume within 10ns
- can specify when an output will occur to 2ns,
and measure when input occurred to 2ns.
- up to 32 cores/chip (4000MIPS), can daisy chain
chips for more cores (software unchanged but
there is some added latency)
They are more than capable of sourcing/sinking
100Mb/s ethernet serial streams.

The cores are hard realtime; the IDE guarantees
timing; none of this "measure and hope you hit
the worst case" nonsense.

The xC software is excellent and designed for
multicore operation; there's nothing else that
comes close. The heritage is Hoare's Communicating
Sequential Processes (CSP), Occam and Transputer.
Comms between cores is exactly the same as comms
to i/o, via "ports".

https://www.xmos.com/download/xCORE-Architecture-Flyer(1.3).pdf

 

[Winfield Hill]

Tom Gardner wrote...

If I wanted to generate an arbitrary bitstream
in software (as opposed to an FPGA), I'd use
a *hard* realtime multicore processor with up
to 32 cores. Key principles: simply dedicate
one core to an i/o port, no interrupts, no caches,
excellent inter-core comms hardware *and* software.
The latter is missing from everything else.

But no hardware counter/timer available?
Make one in software, with decisions and
loops? Assembly language, or equivalent?


--
Thanks,
- Win

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 11/08/19 09:58, Winfield Hill wrote:

Tom Gardner wrote...

If I wanted to generate an arbitrary bitstream
in software (as opposed to an FPGA), I'd use
a *hard* realtime multicore processor with up
to 32 cores. Key principles: simply dedicate
one core to an i/o port, no interrupts, no caches,
excellent inter-core comms hardware *and* software.
The latter is missing from everything else.

But no hardware counter/timer available?
Make one in software, with decisions and
loops? Assembly language, or equivalent?

Oh, I took that for granted, and it is *much* better
and easier than you might expect

There is a global timer. Every port has its own timer.

The language is basically C/C++
- plus constructs for parallel programming, e.g.
par, select
- minus constructs that foul up parallel programming
e.g. aliasing, memory accessed by more than one core
- ports are to/from pins or other cores
- ports to other cores are 32 bits
- ports to pins are 1/2/4/8/32 bits wide, options
- SERDES
- strobed
- different clock rate to the cores, max 250MHz/4ns
- buffered
- external clock
- conditional, value == X or value != X
- setting up the ports is simple and obvious (unlike
many processors!), via function calls
- you can escape to C/C++ if you want; I never have
- the assembler is documented and visible in the
xTime IDE (Eclipse based); only see it when single
stepping in the usual fashion.

There are language constructs to use the timers:

- input: stall a core until input is available
and capture the input and the i/o clock cycle at
which it arrived
e.g. aPort :> inValue @ whenInputArrived;

- output: state the clock cycle at which an output
must be done, and stall a core until it has
been output
e.g. aPort <: outValue @ whenOutputWillHappen;

- timeouts

- stall a core until any one of several events occur,
then resume, e.g. wait for either input or timeout
if neither
select {
case aPort :> aInVal:
...
case bPort :> bInVal:
...
case aTimer when timerafter( timeout ) : > void :
...
}

where resumption latency is 10ns (not us/ms etc!),
and the IDE examines the binary to tell you how long
it *will* take to get from here to there.

Overall it is like having an RTOS in the language
and hardware.

The restrictions, such as they are, are easily understood
and /predictable/ iff you think in terms of what is
safe/dangerous/possible in a multicore environment.