Re: Best low cost uP for full Linux

On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:33:43 -0700 (PDT)
m <martin.usenet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I am trying to select a uP to build into an embedded device. Here are
the requirements:

- Run full Linux with MMU support
- External bus support for more than 256MB of RAM, preferably DDR2
- Support for 64MB+ of NAND FLASH
- Support for 8MB of NOR FLASH
- I2C (2 ports ideal, one is OK)
- SPI
- USB Host x2
- 10/100 Ethernet
- At least two serial ports, four even better
- LCD interface highly desirable
- 16 to 32 available parallel I/O pins
- Expansion bus for external peripherals
- Low cost

Something like the Coldfire MC5329 would be perfect, except that this
chip does not have a MMU and you are forced to use uCLinux, which I
want to avoid due to the lack of memory protection and other
limitations.

I'd appreciate a shove in the right direction.

Thanks,

-Martin

I actually just had a Freescale rep in yesterday afternoon, and he pointed me at an extremely interesting new widget. It's the MCF5445x (0 <= x <= 5). V4 Coldfire chip with an MMU, DDR2 controller, really all sorts of stuff. I've barely cracked the data*** myself so far, but at first glance it seems to meet your requirements, and was just south of $10/ (at 10Kunit pricing!).

It looks like several of the V4 flavors have MMUs, so if you're extremely lucky some Linux jock may have even gotten the code working for it already.

--
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology
Email address is currently out of order
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