System on Chip

[J Freeman]

Hi there,

I am wondering if anyone can help me with some design questions I am
having.

I have done a fair amount with microcontrollers, mainly AVR's, but now I
am reaching the limits of what they can do. So I am starting to look at
microprocessors and System On Chip (SOC) devices. The thing is, I know
very little about the way these all work. So I am wondering if anyone
can help point me in the right direction.

Firstly, can anyone recommend any literature on designing with such
devices?

Secondly, I am wondering if anyone knows of a SOC devices which has:
Ethernet, LCD, and IDE/ATA Interfaces? Which comes in a non BGA package.

Further, does anyone know of any "coprocessors" which can provide
functions lacking from SOC's such as IDE and LCD which have easy driver
support from within Linux.

And finally, is there an affordable way of hand soldering BGA packages?

Thanks

Julia

 

[Robert Lacoste]

Hi Julia,

Within the SOC family you will find a lot of components with processor, LCD,
Ethernet, etc, but as far as I know all are targeting high volume/low size
applications, so all are now in BGA. One good candidate could be the Intel
PXA255 for example.

However you must know that building a system around one of these chips from
start is a quite long task, in particular on the software side (linux
drivers integration, etc, etc). The order of magnitude of the complexity
have nothing to do with microcontrollers.

So why not using directly a COM (Computer On Module), already supplied with
Linux ?
For example see http://www.compulab.co.il/armcore-gx.htm.

Friendly yours,
--
Robert Lacoste
ALCIOM - The mixed signal experts
www.alciom.com

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"J Freeman" <usenet@quixotic.org.uk> a écrit dans le message de news:
326ufpF3j8rq5U1@individual.net...

Hi there,

I am wondering if anyone can help me with some design questions I am
having.

I have done a fair amount with microcontrollers, mainly AVR's, but now I
am reaching the limits of what they can do. So I am starting to look at
microprocessors and System On Chip (SOC) devices. The thing is, I know
very little about the way these all work. So I am wondering if anyone
can help point me in the right direction.

Firstly, can anyone recommend any literature on designing with such
devices?

Secondly, I am wondering if anyone knows of a SOC devices which has:
Ethernet, LCD, and IDE/ATA Interfaces? Which comes in a non BGA package.

Further, does anyone know of any "coprocessors" which can provide
functions lacking from SOC's such as IDE and LCD which have easy driver
support from within Linux.

And finally, is there an affordable way of hand soldering BGA packages?

Thanks

Julia