MPC850 Development Board - with SDRAM

MPC850 Development Board - with SDRAM

[Dan Dickey]

Hi,
yes - I have an RPX Lite sitting right next to me.
But, apparently Embedded Planet doesn't have any
development boards with SDRAM on them.  Does anyone
out there know of companies that do make them and
have them available?  Right now, the only company
I'm aware of that does is http://www.tqc.de.
Is there any competition for this market?
	-Dan

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Re: MPC850 Development Board - with SDRAM

[Dan Malek]

Dan Dickey wrote:

> yes - I have an RPX Lite sitting right next to me.
> But, apparently Embedded Planet doesn't have any
> development boards with SDRAM on them.


Embedded Planet does not build development boards, they
build production boards for OEMs to integrate into products
to reduce development cost and risk.  There is always
a debate about EDO versus SDRAM.  Their design started wtih
EDO, and since it continues to be available with both
competitive cost and performance there isn't a reason to
change the design.

Products that wish to use SDRAM do so by placing it on their
boards that connect to the Embedded Planet board.  This allows
the flexibility to add the necessary amount of memory for
the product requirements.  You can use the UPMB signals from
the RPX-Lite processor bus connector in your design if you
require SDRAM.



	-- Dan

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Re: MPC850 Development Board - with SDRAM

[Dan Dickey]

Dan Malek wrote:
> 
> Dan Dickey wrote:
> 
> > yes - I have an RPX Lite sitting right next to me.
> > But, apparently Embedded Planet doesn't have any
> > development boards with SDRAM on them.
> 
> Embedded Planet does not build development boards, they
> build production boards for OEMs to integrate into products
> to reduce development cost and risk.

Sorry - didn't mean to imply that.  I'm aware of what they
advertise on their web page (http://www.embeddedplanet.com/)
and how some of it is used.  I'm not sure that any "smaller"
companies actually make powerpc development systems - instead,
I can only find them at Motorola and IBM, and ???.

>   There is always
> a debate about EDO versus SDRAM.  Their design started wtih
> EDO, and since it continues to be available with both
> competitive cost and performance there isn't a reason to
> change the design.
> 
> Products that wish to use SDRAM do so by placing it on their
> boards that connect to the Embedded Planet board.  This allows
> the flexibility to add the necessary amount of memory for
> the product requirements.  You can use the UPMB signals from
> the RPX-Lite processor bus connector in your design if you
> require SDRAM.
> 
>         -- Dan

Yes, I've become a little more aware of this situation since
claiming the above.  Here's a message I received from
Robert Applebaum (who works for Embedded Planet I believe).
He gave permission to repost this to the list.

Robert Applebaum wrote:
> 
> Dan, we use EDO on CPU boards, but have PC100 SDRAM on new IO cards such as
> the VEXC which use the UPM B (the EDO on UPM A are used as a single Heap)
> 
> all our new products have SDRAM

I haven't responded back to Robert yet; but I'm intrigued by the
last line - is there a system in the works that has SDRAM on it?
(And no EDO).  Time will tell.

And yes - I'm aware that Embedded Planet isn't in the
development system market - but you do have to admit, their
boards also fulfill that requirement pretty well.  :)
	-Dan

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Re: MPC850 Development Board - with SDRAM

[Dan Malek]

Dan Dickey wrote:

> .....  I'm not sure that any "smaller"
> companies actually make powerpc development systems - instead,
> I can only find them at Motorola and IBM, and ???.

There are some, but their goal is usually to sell expensive PC-based
development tools.  They are also subject to the silicon "droppings"
(from all parts suppliers) since the volume is small.


> I haven't responded back to Robert yet; but I'm intrigued by the
> last line - is there a system in the works that has SDRAM on it?
> (And no EDO).  Time will tell.

Of course there are such systems in the works.  Like he said,
their expansion boards have it as an option, and if you consider
what they do and future processors available......


> And yes - I'm aware that Embedded Planet isn't in the
> development system market - but you do have to admit, their
> boards also fulfill that requirement pretty well.  :)


Yes, they do.  It is more fun to work with companies that integrate
these boards and see your efforts (and software) be deployed in
just a few months.  Developing boot roms and debugging hardware
is fun once or twice, but developing cool applications quickly
is fun forever.


	-- Dan

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