Emacs and LLDB

Posted Feb 12, 2015 10:46 UTC (Thu) by yaap (subscriber, #71398)
In reply to: Emacs and LLDB by pabs
Parent article: Emacs and LLDB

You're right, but in the case of Apple this is not a big concern: they're using Intel and ARM architectures only, and there is an open Clang/LLVM for those. So yes, Apple can provide their own variant in binary only form, but you can still get a pretty close open version. This works becose there is enough open general interest in those architecture to sustain an open development process.

The difference in the embedded world is that there is a lot of diversity and fragmentation. And there is not enough public interest to support an open toolchain. Just like the IP vendor depends on an open source toolchain because they don't have the resources to implement one from scratch for their architecture, most users do not have the resources to add this specific architecture support to either GCC or LLVM. So as a user you depend on the IP vendor for this.

Emacs and LLDB

Posted Feb 12, 2015 11:11 UTC (Thu) by justincormack (subscriber, #70439) [Link] (3 responses)

Well if the embedded people cant even afford to develop a toolchain to go with their chips they deserve to go out of business. They should use open core designs that already have toolchains (RISC-V for example looks promising).

Emacs and LLDB

Posted Feb 12, 2015 14:20 UTC (Thu) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (2 responses)

I'm looking forward to when lowRISC starts producing some silicon.

http://www.lowrisc.org/

Emacs and LLDB

Posted Feb 12, 2015 14:34 UTC (Thu) by yaap (subscriber, #71398) [Link] (1 responses)

Very interesting, but quite high-end compared to the embedded cores I had in mind. The lowRISC is 64 bits, multi-core with L2 and cache coherency. You get in the same class as some Cortex A or MIPS core, where toolchain openess is not an issue.
What I had in mind for deep embedded stuff is more like the Cortex M serie. So 32 bits, short pipeline with TCMs and maybe L1 caches but nothing more. The market is much more fragmented at this level.

There are open source efforts (Mico32, Nios, 32 bits versions of RISC V, Leon...), and sometimes suitable (I've used some) but not always either due to lack of maturity, features or performance. Hopefully some will get there, for now in many applications it's not economic or practical to roll your own, so people turn to commercially supported IPs.

Emacs and LLDB

Posted Feb 13, 2015 10:56 UTC (Fri) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link]

FWIW, Parallax Propeller [1] is GPLV3. If I get you right, it's a bit lower than the ones you have in mind (I think there's no L1), but a very interesting design nonetheless.

[1] <http://www.parallax.com/microcontrollers/propeller-1-open...>