Re: AM623 experiences

On 24/11/2024 00:56, Don Y wrote:

On 11/23/2024 12:57 PM, Grant Edwards wrote:

On 2024-11-23, David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 23/11/2024 09:15, Don Y wrote:

I'm looking to move my design onto said platform.
>
Any first-hand experiences to share?
>
Bugs in silicon, toolchain, support, etc.?

>
I've no experience with that device at all, but from experience with
other toolchains provided by TI over the years, watch out for zero
initialisation of variables in the bss.

 [Hmmm... I don't see your post, David.  <frown>  Something must be
hosed in my server.  (actually, I don't see MANY posts, here!  Quiet?)]
 

I don't think there is anything odd with my posting or the server on my side (eternal-september).  But Grant quoted the most important part of my post - the rest was more venting than informative!
It /is/ quiet in this newsgroup.

BSS is a good warning.  I've been using other tools with the ARM that
I've "abandoned" ("moved past" might be a kinder way of reference).
 I tend to rely on vendors tools *if* there is likely to be some
bug that the tools can workaround -- that a third-party vendor
may not be aware of (or address).
 

ARM is pretty good at making sure they cover all known bugs - so their gcc toolchain builds tend to have backported patches that are not in the mainstream gcc source tree until a version or two later.  Mistakes can happen, of course, and you can look at the issue trackers for their toolchain builds to see some of them.  But for the kind of cores in question here, the microcontroller vendors have little influence over the cores themselves, and therefore less scope of introducing vendor-specific bugs.

For the cortex M4, I'd avoid using TI's toolchain if at all possible.
Download a copy of GCC from ARM.

 This is an A53 (ARMv8) -- at least the "main cores" are.  There's
also an M4(F) -- and, as typical of ARM, a couple of other
"specialty processors".
 

The general rule I've found to be true for the past 40 years is that
software/tools supplied by silicon vendors is crap.

 That's a direct analog of the issues with "sample applications" for
hardware devices!
 What about "support"?  Are there anything other than trained monkeys
available?  Or, is everything "forum based" (what a great scam!
outsource your support to your CUSTOMERS!!)
 

It is not uncommon for vendor employees to take part in these forums too.  It is not actually a bad idea, because it means that when they answer a customer's question, the answer is available for anyone else doing a search.