On 8/26/06, Wouter van Ooijen <wouter@voti.nl> wrote:
> > Maybe some people in this list have used various ARM7 MCUs. Could
> > you comments on these ARM7 chips?
>
> After a quick check at digikey to check availablity and prices (compared
> to Philips LPC):
> - only high-pin-count packages
> - large FLASH
> - ~ same speed
> - smaller RAM (small compared to compareable LPC's)
> - somewhat higher price
> - GPIO and special function pins are not shared (dunno whether this is
> good or bad)
>

You are right. I have some observations.

- TI is arguably a better semiconductor company to deal with than
   Philips semiconductor (not so sure about the new entity)
- Compare to LPC with CAN controller, TMS470 might be even
   cheaper than Atmel and Philips ARM7 MCU
- There are much more resources for Philips and Atmel ARM7 chips
- Development tools are actually quite similar: Olimex offers demo boards
   for both, IAR 32k free EWARM C compiler supports most of the ARM7 MCUs.
   I am not so sure about GCC support for TMS470 MCUs (seems to missing
   header files).
- TMS470 has the High End Timer (kind of co-processor) with its own
   instruction set which is good for generating PWM signal or other wavwforms
- Less RAM can be a problem for certain applications for the TMS470 parts
- Philips by far offers many more ARM7 MCUs than any other vendors.
  It seems to me TI only targets automotive and industrial control applications
  (all TI offerings have CAN controllers built-in).

Regards,
Xiaofan
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