Rockbox Player - Project to design and build a Free/Open hardware audio player

[Llorean]

Lossless codecs tend to take less power than Lossy codecs (with the exception of Monkey's Audio).

How fast, exactly, is this CPU?

[saratoga]

ARM9 CPUs start at "faster then 1 core of a V1 Sansa" and get faster from there.  Still saying "ARM9" doesn't tell us much, since theres a lot of very different processors sold under the ARM9 brand, with the common factor being that they were all before ARM10 and faster then ARM7.

[casainho]

ARM9 CPUs start at "faster then 1 core of a V1 Sansa" and get faster from there.  Still saying "ARM9" doesn't tell us much, since theres a lot of very different processors sold under the ARM9 brand, with the common factor being that they were all before ARM10 and faster then ARM7.

It will be a LPC3130.

And the LCD($35) will have medium/good quality because the hardware is being tunning to be cheap - but the LCD will be for sure much better than that used on last prototype.

There will be other versions of base board of hardware that will have more RAM, for running Linux.

[Bagder]

A quick check seems to indicate the primary CPU core related diffs are:

• they use the exact same ARM core (ARM926EJ-S)
• the LPC is clocked at 180MHz while the Atmel one is 190MHz
• the LPC one has 16KB data + 16KB instruction caches, while the Atmel one has 8+8

[casainho]

A quick check seems to indicate the primary CPU core related diffs are:

• they use the exact same ARM core (ARM926EJ-S)

But this LPC3130 don't have DSP instructions has the AT91SAM9260 have. I think that DSP instructions could be good for audio processing.

[Bagder]

But this LPC3130 don't have DSP instructions has the AT91SAM9260 have. I think that DSP instructions could be good for audio processing.

Only if you would optimize the existing codecs to use said DSP instructions. I would expect that to be quite complicated and not for the faint of hearted in the audience. And there's nothing like that done for existing ARM targets.

[casainho]

But this LPC3130 don't have DSP instructions has the AT91SAM9260 have. I think that DSP instructions could be good for audio processing.

Only if you would optimize the existing codecs to use said DSP instructions. I would expect that to be quite complicated and not for the faint of hearted in the audience. And there's nothing like that done for existing ARM targets.

Ok. The most important now is to have a cheap base hardware (but including good LCD, audio).

On next iterations we can rethink about this subjects.

The boards (without plastic case) cannot cost significantly more than $100. Let's see if we can get this objective. With netbooks with ARM for $150 or less on next months and economic problems, it's difficult to justify buying this hardware.

[kugel.]

The LPC3130 has only one storage interface. Didn't you want to have internal and external storage? Or is it still possible with only 1 interface?

[Bagder]

  So, are you still going to have two different complier? A complier for the Rockbox source and a different complier for the microcontroller?

That was never the case. And there's no two separate things either really, unless you count the bootloader and the Rockbox core as different but they're built with the same compiler. This new SoC will of course use the exact same compiler as before.

[casainho]

The LPC3130 has only one storage interface. Didn't you want to have internal and external storage? Or is it still possible with only 1 interface?

The early schematics are here. You need to install KiCAD for see them.

Sorry, I need to look careful to schematics - I am not the one that is designing it nor choosing the components. I think we can choose also the LPC3131.

I think system will use NAND flash for boot but can also boot from SD Card (although I don't know how we will do with the royalties for using SD bus).

[scharkalvin]

I think system will use NAND flash for boot but can also boot from SD Card (although I don't know how we will do with the royalties for using SD bus).

IIRC you only have to worry about royalties if you use the SD mode.  If you use the spi mode to talk to the SD card you don't have pay any royalties.
The spi mode might be a little slower since in SD mode you can transfer several bits at a time.

[casainho]

Don't worry, we will just need to use GCC ARM (assembler, compiler, linker, debugger). We can also use (I use it) Eclipse IDE for coding and debug.

We will also need for debug the JTAG dongle and OpenOCD.

All that tools are Free Software, even the JTAG dongle are Open Hardware (some cheap versions).

For programming ARM we can use this tools, even if ARM is from different companies like Atmel, Phillips, SG Thomson, etc. That's one advantage of using ARM.

When we have the board selling, we will start documenting the way for programming and debug the code on it :-)

And by the way, on Linux Ubuntu is very easy to install all development tools we need :-)

[Bagder]

This is a three quotes from "Using Open Source Tools For AT91SAM7S Cross Development" pdf

Right. But that's Atmel's take and advice on how you can work. That's not the Rockbox way nor do they mention the tools we use. Even if you happen to run Rockbox on Atmel chips.

On this part of Rockbox site;
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SimpleGuideToCompiling#What_You_Will_Need

it shows that Cygwin is used, but the utilities does not need it.

No. It shows that you can use cygwin. But even if you use real linux, vmwared linux or cygwin you use the same gcc version with the same configs and possible patches.

This is confusing, are the utilities a version of Cygwin or rewritten with Cygwin?

The tools are all gcc and family. They've existed for decades, within or outside of cygwin.

(Shall we drop this subject now as it has nothing to do with the Lyre player anymore)

[casainho]

I think system will use NAND flash for boot but can also boot from SD Card (although I don't know how we will do with the royalties for using SD bus).

IIRC you only have to worry about royalties if you use the SD mode.  If you use the spi mode to talk to the SD card you don't have pay any royalties.
The spi mode might be a little slower since in SD mode you can transfer several bits at a time.

Ok. The card is wired with a 4-bit bus but is the same for MMC and SD. For MMC there is no royalties, so, the final user will have just to pay if uses SD.

On LPC manual we can read: "LPC3130/31 boot ROM interacts with memory
cards in 1-bit bus mode only." So I think it reads the card by SPI
while trying to boot. SD BUS is 4-bit mode while SPI 1-bit, I think, so, it can boot without the need to pay royalties for using SD Card.

Now I must see if with the 4 wires for SD bus it can also uses 1 wire, to avoid the royalties and have the same schematic/wirings and give the people all the possibilities.

NOTE: We pretend to use internal NAND Flash for booting and not the SD Card. That NAND will hold RB bootloader + firmware. SD Card for music files (expansion storage).

[Bagder]

NOTE: We pretend to use internal NAND Flash for booting and not the SD Card. That NAND will hold RB bootloader + firmware. SD Card for music files (expansion storage).

I suppose you mean "plan" or "are going" and not pretend in the above text. Look up what pretend means...