Low Power RF Proprietary Software & SimpliciTI

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

mm — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:06:37 GMT

Dear LPWRocks

As what you said I sould be able to make the sample simpliciTI projects in keil, I did it but the program is not working properly. I have some previous posts in : https://community.ti.com/forums/t/4752.aspx

could you help me to solve the problem?

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

adrian — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:36:35 GMT

If anyone out there is interested in using CCE v3 for MSP430, the beta of the CCE v3.1 compiler is available for download. See this post for details. The compiler performance has been improved significantly and more intrinsics have been added making it more code compatible with IAR.

For those of you how haven't used CCE v3 but may have tried CCS in the past - the two IDEs have almost nothing in common. CCE is Eclipse based which is a very flexible open source framework. They share a common compiler base but the CCE version of the CGT (code generation tools) is optimized for the MSP430 architecture.

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

LPRF Rocks the World — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:56:42 GMT

Great feedback JP. I cherish your idea, but from a support perspective where I come from it is challenging to build, test, maintain and support multiple tool chains. (BTW: I really appreciated your feedback, thank you). This community can hopefully grow with start of new threads with firmware packages that are supported by other IDE etc that everyone can benefit from. This is my dream.....

It is clearly important to keep a vibrant university community with free tools using our LPRF products like you mention. Again, Keil is also another tool chain that I have worked with. As a Chipcon dude we really did all our work for older products with Keil, CC1010 is an example. Still we have sample code for SmartRFEB04 using our transceiver build for Keil available on the web. See below.

CC1100 CC1101 CC2500 Examples Libraries (Rev. E)(swrc021e.zip, 737 KB )
21 Dec 2007 zip

Actually, lot of the TI LPRF code is already available using other compiler and IDE'. A few examples below:

Already the CC2430 is support with SDCC through the TinyOS community. MSP430 support for gcc is through this community also and the Contiki OS. FreeRTOS with benchmark using MSP430 and mspgcc is also available

http://www.tinyos8051wg.net/

http://www.sics.se/contiki/

http://www.freertos.org/

http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=213457

Please keep your feedback and comments coming. Again, great feedback. Hopefully you are also aware of the TI University program

As a sidetrack if you are interested: Check out the SWIG community introduced to me my a great colleague of mine if you like scripts in your development

http://www.swig.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWIG

Enjoy I hope :)

LPRF_Rocks "the world"

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

JP — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:04:33 GMT

My point was not to throw away the support for IAR, but to improve the Keil, SDCC, gcc, and CCS compiler's support...

I don't care if one is cheaper than the other, or if it is code limited, or ... IF i may use a free, not optimized replacement to investigate the feasibility. After this step, I will spend thousands of dollars for the best one I want.

If I already have a product which was developed and optimized since decades, good for me (and Keil's banking is not difficult at all, BTW). BUT, if I have the choice I will be happy, if I don't I will like now throw my boards thru the window ... after trying to strip the application to fit in the free code size limit.

Moreover, from an academic point of view, Keil is far more interesting than IAR. And from the no-hacker-hiding-in-the-basement perspective, 4k or 30 days is not enough. I am just a customer who doesn't want to buy an new set of compiler, debugger, jtag, IDE, ICE, ... every time he is trying to use another MCU, even from the same family. Do TI propose 10 different sets of tools for the different DSP ? No ... just CCS. The 8051 family is very old and propose a lot of very nice tools. Why can we not use this heritage ?

Anyway ... I will just receive a politically correct answer from TI's guys saying they will reconsider the situation probably only when Zigbee/802.15.4 will die. And that's a forum reserved to make TI public announcement, not to listen to customer or letting them discuss (interesting) point.

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

esy — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:56:13 GMT

KRIP:
I use Chipcon SmartRF04 Driver (http://www.keil.com/download/docs/365.asp) for debug CC2511. It work good. I have problem with CC1111. This driver (SmartRF04Mon.dll) not supports CC1111. How can I debug CC1111 with Keil?

Hi KRIP,

the currently available debugger plugin (SmartRF04Mon.dll) for Keil µVision does not support the CC1111 system-on-chip -- yet. We are aware of this and are working on adding debug support for it. Please see this thread for more info.

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

User — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:26:45 GMT

JP:

The solution you seems to prefer, the evaluation period is so much useless! 4kB of code, even during 60 days are nothing. Just the Zigbee stack could full it, letting too few space for user code. And moreover, who needs only 60 days for "evaluation"?
...

There is a choice:

Evalution Edtion = No code limit, builds for 30days

Kickstart edition = 4kb code size limit, but NO time limit

I *think* the stack is excluded from the 4kb code size count.

Keil and IAR pricing are equal

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

KRIP — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:44:06 GMT

I use Chipcon SmartRF04 Driver (http://www.keil.com/download/docs/365.asp) for debug CC2511. It work good. I have problem with CC1111. This driver (SmartRF04Mon.dll) not supports CC1111. How can I debug CC1111 with Keil?

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

"Double 0" — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:14:35 GMT

I think this is more of an 8051 tool chain issue... Everyone has their preferred compiler... other than convenience and cost, what does the Keil compiler offer that the IAR compiler doesn't? Note that the Keil compiler doesn't come cheap either. I believe the licensing fees are comparable to IAR's. On the 2430, since it has more than 64K of flash, this requires code banking support, and I've heard in order to support code banking with Keil, this becomes a very manual and tedius process, meaning you have to have put a compiler directive in front of every function or groups of functions in order to get optimized code. Does anyone have any user experience with the Keil code banking support? Would be interested in any lessons learned etc. Thanks in advance.

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

Hobbyist — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:32:27 GMT

Hi RF Explorer,

I think it is easier if you just start your discussion with a new thread. I am very interested in this for my RF protocol for best preformance

Here is the thread I started:

https://community.ti.com/forums/t/433.aspx

Hobbyist

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

RF-Explorer — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:07:11 GMT

LPWRocks:
What about benchmark numbers? Have you been able to dig into this a little bit too? How is Rowley compared to IAR?

I hope I can provide some comparative benchmarks pretty soon. Fortunately it's pretty easy to move code between the 2 toolsets. Most code examples come "pre-packaged" for IAR, but Rowley's intrinsics are very similar & they have a header file that makes the porting almost brain-dead easy.

Of course, the hard part about benchmarking is making it an apples-to-apples comparision, i.e. are the compiler options & optimization settings really comparable when doing the test?

I will update - perhaps starting a new thread - when I have some valid comparisons to make.

P.S. I have to say, it's very nice to have 3-4 viable toolsets (CCE, IAR, Rowley, and even MSP-GCC) for the MSP430. Keeps everyone honest!

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

LPRF Rocks the World — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:53:56 GMT

Hi RF-Explorer,

Great feedback

What about benchmark numbers? Have you been able to dig into this a little bit too? How is Rowley compared to IAR?

LPWRocks

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

RF-Explorer — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:51:44 GMT

LPWRocks:
Did you port SimpliciTI to CCE v3?
LPWRocks

No I didn't port SimpliciTI to CCE3 .... the 2 main IDEs I've been using are IAR & Rowley.... I like IAR's interface more, to me it is cleaner & more intuitive... Rowley seems to be over-the-top with inheritance & details (e.g. to debug, you must first "attach to a target" and then "start debugging") - for such a straightforward uC family, the Rowley CrossStudio IDE seems to be a bit overly-complicated, but the price is more reasonable than IAR and it seems to have the same capabilities.

CCE3 might be the best of both worlds, but I'm a little "gun shy" after using CCv2 on the DSP side (that was 4 years ago and a different processor family, so maybe that's not a fair comparison to make)

Also maybe you can confirm this - I believe at MSP430 Day a few months back the instructor indicated that not only do you get 2x the project code size with the free version of CCE3 (compared to IAR), but also it compiles/builds IAR projects "out of the box", at least mostly.

It's just that with any IDE/toolset, you always have to make an investment in the learning curve, and once you've become proficient in an IDE, it's so much easier just to stick with it.

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

LPRF Rocks the World — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 10:46:10 GMT

Did you port SimpliciTI to CCE v3?

LPWRocks

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

RF-Explorer — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 20:47:54 GMT

LPWRocks:
Hi all,
Great discussion. Feel free to use any compiler and IDE you would like for all other LPW software packages except for our ZigBee solution with its limitations on IDE usage.
For example, SimpliciTI is provide as source code, so feel free to build it with your IDE and compiler of choice for your preferred LPW transceiver or LPW RF SoC solution.

This is exactly one of the reasons I'm looking hard at TI for a low-power wireless design (MSP430 + CC2500). I want to use Rowley's CrossStudio & my wireless needs are pretty basic - perfectly handled by SimpliciTi & the 2500 - so this is a viable solution. If Simpliciti was tied to a toolset or just provided as libraries (as opposed to source), I'd be looking at other solutions.

So those of you at TI - good job, good technical & business decisions regarding SimpliciTI... a little positive feedback never hurt anyone!

P.S. I might give CCE v3 a shot down the road - I had fun (sarcasm on) with CC v2 working on a C54xx DSP project & that made me gun shy. The compiler & debugger were fine, but the memory mapping utility (a bit more complex on a DSP) was frightful & complicated. Then on forums & boards people calling CCE things like "Code Contorter" doesn't make me any more comfortable. Never used CCE for the MSP430 though in all fairness. The price is attractive and the free version is pretty generous.

Re: Dump the IAR compiler and go with Keil C51

LPRF Rocks the World — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 15:31:56 GMT

Hi all,

Great discussion. Feel free to use any compiler and IDE you would like for all other LPW software packages except for our ZigBee solution with its limitations on IDE usage.

For example, SimpliciTI is provide as source code, so feel free to build it with your IDE and compiler of choice for your preferred LPW transceiver or LPW RF SoC solution.

From a TI perspective with MSP430 + LPW, CCE is actutally the most interesting option to explore

Code Composer Essentials:

http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/msp-cce430.html?DCMP=MSP430_cce&HQS=Other+OT+cce

LPWRocks