[ECOS] Blackfin port question or other DSP suggestions

[Rutger Hofman]

Brendon Costa wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have been looking around for information about a blackfin port of
> eCos. I have found a bit of information on the internet, but the
> official list of ports does not seem to include the Analog Devices
> blackfin DSP (http://ecos.sourceware.org/ecos/hardware.html).
> 
> I have listed the links I could find with some information about the
> eCos ports to the blackfin DSP. I figure there is a reason the
> blackfin architecture is not listed in the official ports section of
> eCos even though it seems from a first glance that a port has been
> completed. Does anyone have experience getting eCos to run on one of
> these DSP's? Are any of the ports for the blackfin considered
> stable/complete?
> 
> I want to do some simple audio signal processing, starting with simple
> digital audio mixing of two stereo inputs into a single stereo output
> (4 channels in 2 channels out), possibly to be followed in the future
> by a beat detection algorithm and maybe some other audio
> filtering/effects.
> 
> eCos is not required for this project, but it is a personal
> educational project and one of the areas I want to gain some
> experience using a RTOS such as eCos. The blackfin is an option for
> me, but I am open to other DSP options. Could anyone recommend a DSP I
> could use for basic audio processing that works with eCos (I am also
> using a FPGA on this board, so I am open to soft-core processors too
> if they can achieve what i require)?
> 
> Thanks,
> Brendon.
> 
> 
> 
> http://archiv.tu-chemnitz.de/pub/2006/0200/data/index.html
> Thesis porting eCos to the blackfin architecture
> 
> http://www.nabble.com/port-ecos-to-blackfin-td1483925.html
> Message from someone thinking about doing a port in Nov 2005
> 
> http://trac.rfidguardian.org:8000/trac-0-11b/milestone/Port%20eCos%20%2B%20MRG%20to%20BlackFin%20Stamp-537%20development%20board
> Porting to Blackfin STAMP board

Well, I am running eCos on a BlackFin (BF548 EZ-Kit currently, and soon 
on a custom BF547 board), as you may have surmised. I started from Andre 
Liesk's work (Master's thesis at Univ Chemnitz), which I found to be of 
high quality. I refactored his code to add support for different BFin 
CPUs and boards. I added NAND flash support and did a quick port of 
YAFFS. I added UART-with-interrupts. I added generic control of the 
GPIOs: configuration, interrupts etc. As for my additions, I consider 
them barely in beta state, although I can run multithreaded programs 
that use the file system, service GPIO interrupts etc.

Anyway, you are very welcome to get my (and of course Andre's) code. I 
will be happy to support you through any problems that might surface.

For the list: I had an email conversation w/ Andre Liesk. Like me, he 
prefers to share our code as an official addition to eCos. However, his 
current job is putting him under some pressure. I will ask him again one 
of these days.

Rutger

-- 
Before posting, please read the FAQ: http://ecos.sourceware.org/fom/ecos
and search the list archive: http://ecos.sourceware.org/ml/ecos-discuss