Re: [avr-gcc-list] [OT] Need For Speed (FPGA)

[hanzl]

>      I would like to second Reza's question about what to do when it
> starts looking like your project may need wider, faster computation?
> Specifically does anyone have suggestions about how to get the
> computation done and also leverage a team's experience with avr-gcc
> style development?  I suppose that you could gang several AVRs
> together with a shared memory architecture for example.
>      A key feature of avr-gcc that I need to keep is that the whole
> build process is scriptable.

Try dsPIC. It gives you more power while keeping these nice AVR properties:

- there is gcc port (with some minor problems)
- there are PDIP packaged devices which fit to breadboard
- programmer is easy to build

And dislike AVR, you are quite likely to get free samples.

(Well, it also feels more messy than AVR, but this is subjective.)

I tested many upgrade paths to AVR. My test is simple - I should be
able to get LED blinking using just a bare part in breadboard,
self-build programmer (on the same breadboard) and C program compiled
and downloaded using just opensource tools running on both Linux and
Windows. So far only AVR and dsPIC passed this subjective test :-)
(which is a bad one as I am part of the test environment but I really
do try hard for other MCUs as well). Details for dsPIC are here:

 http://forum.microchip.com/tm.asp?m=94243

Regards

Vaclav Hanzl