[time-nuts] PICPET- was Affordable (cheap) COTS (etc)

Dan Kemppainen dan at irtelemetrics.com
Fri Jan 24 08:54:57 EST 2014


The SX was/is a great chip. (I still use them on a near daily basis)
Troubled history, though. This is part of why Parallax developed the
Propeller.

The premise behind the propeller, is that it is based on the Virtual
Peripherals of the SX. You simulate peripherals by having interrupt code
running many 'threads'. With modern processors shrinking fast, why not
just give these 'threads' of interrupt code their own processor? On top
of that these cores are 32bit cores.

As for life of the Propeller, fear not. It will be around for a long,
long time! What killed the SX chip was the manufacturer/IP holder of the
design, which parallax was not. Parallax owns the IP and production of
the Propeller.

Pics are great, except that I have a hard time figuring out which one to
use. "Option overload" big time!

Dan




On 1/23/2014 7:09 PM, time-nuts-request at febo.com wrote:
> Good thread.
> Yes I am very aware of the parallax propeller. As you both say kind of a
> crazy chip. I have used another product the SXB micros. They run Basic at
> 80 Mhz and are so cheap that If I have more than a few chips I just switch
> over. Unfortunately they are obsolete in the dip form. When I looked at the
> propeller my take away was that it was such an odd chip I actually did not
> want to deal with it figuring its life was just a few years. Its advantage
> was the ability to have so many things running in parallel.
> 
> The great thing about the PICs are there are such a wide diversity of them
> at really cheap prices. Tom thanks for the insight on the synchronous
> clock. Did not realize that.
> Regards
> Paul
> WB8TSL


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