Hi,
I'm currently working on a project based on the Arria V SoC FPGA (ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore). The goal of this project is to run a high speed ethernet link.
For some reasons the customer don't want to use a Linux kernel on the ARM. His wish is to have a simple program running a TCP/IP stack without any OS. In first place I thought about the RL-TCPnet library, but apparently it isn't compatible with the Cortex-A9 processors.
The worst case is to use a small RTOS like FreeRTOS, RTX or other, but in that case the same problem occurs, the Cortex-A9 processor isn't compatible with it.
Can you give me some advice? (I'm not very experienced with ARM processors)
Does anyone know a standalone TCP/IP library compatible with the Cortex-A9 MPCore? If not which kind of royalties free (RT)OS can I use?
Thank you
Arria V SoC: http://www.altera.com/devices/fpga/arria-fpgas/arria-v/hard-processor-system/arrv-soc-hps.html
Evening Aldo,
It is possible to program the ARM Cortex-A9 bare metal but I don't see that as an easy task, especially to add things like a TCP/IP stack...
When you talked about RTOS, I thought about FreeRTOS straight away.
I am not sure how you reached the conclusion that it was not compatible with the ARM Cortex-A9 processor.
Looking at FreeRTOS running on the RZ microprocessor from Renesas, you can see a port of FreeRTOS on Renesas Cortex-A9 processor based RZ series.
The port is given for ARM DS-5. Maybe that could be useful to you?
Hi Aldo,
NicheStack TCP/IP from InterNiche Technologies will run on a superloop on the Altera Cortex A9. For more information visit www.iniche.com.
I checked the "supported MCUs" list on FreeRTOS website and any ARM processor wasn't listed under Altera devices. It was actually a fast (and bad) conclusion.
Looking at FreeRTOS running on the RZ microprocessor from Renesas, you can see a port of FreeRTOS on Renesas Cortex-A9 processor based RZ series. The port is given for ARM DS-5. Maybe that could be useful to you?
Yes, I have seen that demo before but the supported MCUs list confused me. My bad.
I will focus on trying to run FreeRTOS on my SoC.
For my own curiosity, which other OS can be used in that application?
Thanks.
Thanks for the tip Larry. May I suggest you update InterNiche Technologies content to reflect that?
This way when we use the community search we can find it straight away.
For RTOSes, I have another two at the top of my mind. There are most likely others and I encourage anyone reading to add the ones they know!
I am not an expert on ARM Cortex-A9 MPUs though, I can only reply as I know the content on the community very well!
I represent Code Time Technologies, so I am a little biased here.
What FreeRTOS, RTX, etc. cannot offer is multicore support; whereas our mAbassi RTOS and uAbassi RTOS fully support symmetric multicore. It doesn't make much sense to be using a dual core SoC without taking advantage of the multiple cores.
Another option to consider is that we offer standalone versions of our peripheral drivers for the Altera SoC platforms. In the case of TCP/IP, we have paired our internally developed EMAC driver with the open source lwIP stack. This means you can leverage an open source stack, and simply pay for the low level driver. And, better still, you have a stepping stone to a multicore RTOS environment in the future.
Aldo, do you need more info or can you close the question by marking an answer correct?
Sorry I was busy. Thank you so much for all your responses, It's a great forum.
I'm going to present all your OS propositions to my customer. (And secretly I hope to convince him to use Linux thanks to stuff I learned here).
So yes Alban, you can close this topic. Thanks again.
Bye!
PolyCore Software provides development tools for Altera's SOC which will improve your development time. Several RTOSes are supported. For Altera SOCs, our support is with Micrium's uC/OS. For more information please feel free to contact me at Ted.Gribb@PolyCoreSoftware.com and see www.PolyCoreSoftware.com
Sorry for reopen this thread, but I wanted to know if finally using FreeRTOS to run a high speed ethernet link is efficient or not on this kind of Altera SOC (without using Linux).
If yes, which is the general guideline to achieve this ?
Thanks,
Pierre-Jean