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Linux To Gain Another Chip Family

Posted by timothy on from the assimilation-nation dept.

An anonymous reader submits "Freescale will unveil the first ColdFire processors ever to include a memory management unit (MMU), and therefore able to run full-scale Linux, this week at the Embedded Processor Forum in San Jose, Calif. The chips cost $17 - $25, and are used mostly in industrial control and factory automation. Simultaneously, Freescale tools subsidiary Metrowerks announced plans to offer Linux development tools for Coldfire chips, which previously had been restricted to running uClinux due to the lack of an MMU."

14 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. New Amigas by Amiga+Lover · · Score: 4, Informative

    These chips, distantly related to the 68k motorolas, were once touted as a possible upgrade path for new Amigas in the mid 1990s. Hopefully with these new ones, the more modern AmigaOS4 can be ported to them, and continue the heritage. At the moment the only stock available is AmigaOne G3, G4 and mini-itx PPC boards, which are artificially inflated in price by the apple/ibm/motorola consortium.

    1. Re:New Amigas by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 4, Informative

      which are artificially inflated in price by the apple/ibm/motorola consortium.

      It appears that way when in reality, that probably is an exercise in comparing bananas and oranges.

      Development Evaluation / Reference Design boards are generally higher in price because of their volume, and the fact that they have different levels of support, often times, software, documents and engineering support is available to them for this type of product. Products intended for a slightly different market, the embedded market, are often slightly cheaper but don't always fit the "standard" form factors like ATX and ITX, but they weren't meant to be used as personal computers, so that point is moot, although it would probably help prices and cut development costs a lot.

      The idea is that a prospective manufacturer would buy the Devel board to test the capabilities of the overall system. When they want volume, they take the reference design as a basis for their own fabrication and and make it in volume, but often for proprietary form factors to fit a very specific task.

      One thing I noticed is that reference boards for Intel and AMD chips often cost a little more than those for RISC chips. If the ARM board costs $600, a similar embedded reference board for an x86 chip often costed $700 to $800. The difference here is that there are plenty of consumer boards available for x86 systems, but not RISC systems, so this is where the RISC boards look expensive.

  2. motorola by Coneasfast · · Score: 4, Informative

    freescale is a subsidiary of motorola, here is homepage for coldfire.

    --
    Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
  3. on chip stuff by baryon351 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Other key features of the new MCF547x and MCF548x ColdFire processors include on-chip FPU and eMAC

    Dammit apple, I just bought a brand new eMac only months ago, and now they're putting them on-chip for under $30!

  4. ColdFire is *already* supported in Linux by gergoid · · Score: 5, Informative

    I added support for ColdFire processors to Linux years ago. This won't be new. It was added to Linus kernels in the 2.5 series, and is fully supported in the 2.6 kernels for all the older ColdFire parts (5206, 5249, 5272, 5282, 5307, 5407). Ofcourse the older parts did not have an MMU.

    Look under the arch/m68knommu branch for all the architecture support...

    1. Re:ColdFire is *already* supported in Linux by gergoid · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wrong. The ColdFire's run the same ISA as the m68k family. They are just a reimplemtation of the their ISA. Go look at the code under arch/m68knommu in the 2.6 linux source. You will find my name next to all the ColdFire bits.

    2. Re:ColdFire is *already* supported in Linux by pyrrhonist · · Score: 4, Funny
      That was put there for 68ks such as the 68EC060 which had no MMU, not coldfire

      Yeah! Way to serve the guy who wrote the support for the earlier ColdFire chips! Greg was obviously talking out his ass and doesn't know anything about the code he wrote. IT'S ON!

      /*
      * crt0_ram.S -- startup code for MCF5206 ColdFire Arnewsh board.
      *
      * (C) Copyright 1999-2002, Greg Ungerer (gerg@snapgear.com).
      *
      --
      Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
  5. Re:Metrowerks by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Informative

    Huh? Metrowerks produces apple development tools, and they dabble in linux/embedded development tools. I'm pretty sure that Metrowerks is not a freescale subsidary. See for example this PR.

    1 - Metrowerks is a Freescale "early tester", i.e. they get Freescale stuff first

    2 - Metrowerks acquired Lineo and their Embedix Linux offering a while ago, and offer it as one of their core products. Therefore, they more than "dabble" in Linux.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  6. Re:Great, I can use them by DAldredge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mission critical systems and first generation chips are not a good match.

  7. FYI Freescale is the old Motorola SPS group by cacheMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This isn't some fly-by-night chip maker.

  8. PowerPC is as cheap as ColdFire by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First, let's compare apples to apples. These new ColdFire processors run at 266 MHz and cost $20-27. The 266MHz PowerPC MPC5200 (also from Motorola) costs $27.

    Even the desktop-class PPC 750s and 74xxs aren't expensive if you buy them in volume. The AmigaOne is expensive because it is a niche-of-a-niche product, not because Moto is ripping people off.

  9. Huge Difference by bsd4me · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is a really big difference between embedded processors and mainstream CPUs.

    The biggest is that power consumption is really important in the embedded world. Sometimes you can only get so much current to a board, or you can't run fans.

    Typically, embedded processors can run without support chips. Many have built in memory controllers and I/O.

    Another thing is the MMU. A lot of embedded processors have MMUs (I think most of the PPC ones do), but OS support for them is a bit lacking (or it was until recently). But at times, the MMU can get in the way

    IMHO, I would never run linux in an embedded product, other than simple internet appliances or where realtime isn't required. Commerical RTOSs like VxWorks really are worth it for most embedded applications.

    --

    (S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))

  10. Re:This isn't a great as it seems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Don't click that link. If you check your status bar, it's "http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.peopl esprimary.com/?n=Sarojin", which redirects to http://www.peoplesprimary.com/?n=Sarojin, not a Google search. The page is nasty

  11. Another chip *family*? No. by DdJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Another chip family? No, unless you think Intel XScale and TI OMAP are in different chip families. The ColdFire chips are just another example of the m68k family, like the DragonBall chips are.