Re: dsPIC33F Lua support (Was: Advocating Lua on an embedded systems fair)

[Asko Kauppi <askok@...>]

Last time I compared PICs and AVR, the later won because it's designed  
for C. This should also make it a better target for Lua.

Things have changed, of course (this was 5 years ago). Maybe in next 5  
years we'll finally get a "Lua stamp" = embedded board where Lua  
integration is "included". The board could even be _designed_ with Lua  
in mind. I have suggested this to Atmel (AVR) at the time. In case  
anyone from there still listens.. :)

-asko


AVR 8bit currently seems to top at 256KB Flash, 8KB RAM.  I would say  
that RAM is too little.

AVR 32bit gives 512KB Flash, Ethernet, USB 2.0, SRAM internal 32/64KB  
or via external bus. That is maybe too much.




Bogdan Marinescu kirjoitti 9.2.2009 kello 16:31:

> I see they have some parts with 256k of Flash/32k of RAM, so the
> answer is a definite "maybe" :) I'm not at all familiar with the dsPIC
> architecture, so I can't say if the code would fit in their 256k of
> RAM. Also, I'm not at all familiar with their compiler support
> libraries (are they ANSI C compliant? POSIX maybe?). It depends a lot
> on the toolchain (eLua will eliminate this dependency at some point in
> the future by providing its own libc/libm, but probably not anytime
> soon).
> For the "best micro we could use part", it depends on your
> requirements. If you want to do DSP, there are some very good and
> cheap parts available from TI (and probably others, but I'm only
> familiar with TI DPSs). If you don't need DSP, just pick an ARM or
> Cortex-M3 core with at least 256k Flash/32k RAM (I'd go for 512k/64k
> personally), you can probably find them as cheap as (or even cheaper
> than) the dsPIC. Look here for a list of the platforms currently
> supported by eLua:
>
> http://eluaproject.net/en/Status
>
> Best,
> Bogdan
>
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 4:23 PM, RJP Computing  
> <rjpcomputing@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am not that familiar with embedded programming, but at my work we  
> > are
> > looking into running Lua on an embedded platform we use internally  
> > at the
> > company. My question is: Can Lua run on a dsPIC33F micro? If not  
> > what is the
> > cheapest and best micro we could use? Any suggestions and help  
> > would be
> > great. Thanks.
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Ryan