[microblaze-uclinux] #### uClinux And Microblaze Usage ####

["Steve Spano" <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Everyone,

My name is Steve Spano and I am the President of Finger Lakes
Engineering, located in Ithaca, Ny (www.fl-eng.com)

We are developing a series of Xilinx+Linux reference designs and
production level boards that will be available for sample/sale within
the next 6-8 months. My goal is to bring Microblaze+Xilinx+Linux to a
fully production ready solution that can then be used by companies
around the world. We have a number of advanced development programs
running right now and have made great progress on this. 

I am sure that a number of people on this community could provide some
valuable insight into what people would be require of production level
Xilinx+Microblaze+Linux solutions. I have a list of key items that have
been in my mind and I wanted to put them out there to see if the
community could help guide my efforts to produce a product that everyone
would be interested in using.

Here are some of my ideas/questions/etc

Connectivity
==========================
What types are interfaces are people using today? (Rs232, Can,
Ethernet?)

What types of additional interfaces are people interested in? (SCSI?
Fibre Channel, IDE?)

How have you used the Ethernet interface already provided in uClinux?
(web hosting, telnet for development? ftp?)

Is anyone really using a VGA port on a microblaze solution? Is this
really something that people would want in an embedded design?

What about Compact Flash? Anyone interested in CF compatibility?

What about Memory Media cards/MMC/etc?

What about I/O? Do people need ADC ports? DAC ports? Isolated relay
drive ports? What are people interested in connecting to a
Xilinx+Microblaze platform for embedded control applications?

Processing Power
==========================
What kind of RAM densities are people using? 32 Meg enough?
What about CPU clock rates? 100MHz seems 'sufficient' but what do you
think?
How about bus width for external memory? 16-bit or 32-bit?

IP Cores
==========================
The basic Ethernet functions in uClinux require the Xilinx OPB_EMAC
core. This is $5k-$10k to license. How are people using this core? Are
you paying the license fee or just still evaluating the core in
free-mode?

What other IP cores are people interested in for on-chip processing?
JPEG compression? DSP/MAC operations?

Form Factor
==========================
Since my firm will be launching products using the Xilinx+uCLinux
architecture, we will be making PCBs. What size/form factors do people
think are acceptable? For example - we could just 'pick a size' but what
about some industry standard footprints like PC/104 for example or other
SingleBoardComputer footprints?


Thanks for all your inputs, in advance. If there is a group with serious
interest in FLE's development plans, we could sign a
Non-Disclosure-Agreement to discuss the programs further and perhaps
tailor some of the development to the groups needs.

 
Steve Spano
Finger Lakes Engineering


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