LPC vs Stellaris micro

[msr]

Hello,

Im just "researching" and I would like to know your opinion.

Which microcontroller do you prefer? Stellaris from TI or LPC from NXP? Other? Why?


I didn't use any. Altougth TI seems better for me because: more evaluation kits, TI licensed ARM technology longer ago than NXP (which may not mean nothing once Luminary Micro was bought by TI), TI seems to have better tools and support in general.

What do you think?

 

[nickelflippr]

NXP lcpxpresso because of price?

 

[msr]

I didn't refer the price because I think they are "very much the same". Not exactly, but...

See: EKK-LM3S811 Texas Instruments MCU, MPU & DSP Development Tools

 

[DirtyLude]

Okay, so...

Luminary was bought out by TI and has not had a decent refresh lately. Apparently they are moving to TI fabs. I've been using the Stellaris and it's pretty good, but now I'm using the LPC13xx CM3's and the LPC11xx CM0's. I like the peripheral setup for the LPC's. Some of the peripherals are very similar to the LPC2xxx parts, so you can port libraries if you've used those. Also LPC has the low power CM0 option and the LPC11xx CM0 parts are almost exactly the same as the LPC13xx, so I can port a program from one to the other mostly just changing headers.
For Stellaris I was using the supplied StellarisWare library which is really nice, but really sucks up the memory and speed. Some high end parts have the library in ROM.
Stellaris low end chips are 50Mhz and high end are 80 Mhz compared to the LPC's 50Mhz for LPC11xx, 72Mhz for LPC13xx, and 100 or 120Mhz for the LPC17xx parts.

Your biggest problem with the LPC13xx and 11xx chips is that they only support Serial Wire Debug and not JTAG. I'm using an adapter that I got from Rowley, but I don't think they are generally available yet and you would need to use Crossworks. There are other programmers that support SWD, but $$$. Crossworks supports SWD using the LM3S811 development board if you get that. The LPCXpresso uses a proprietary SWD programmer that only works with Code Red and I don't think they have any plan of expanding it to other development environments.

I'm going to move forward with the LPC parts and leave the Stellaris parts behind for now. Stellaris has more support out, but only because LPC1xxx has just been released so recently and NXP has a really good track record with their ARM7 series. The Stellaris might have been around longer, but NXP has been an ARM partner for a long time and I think they timed the market well with their release now.

 

[nickelflippr]

I didn't refer the price because I think they are "very much the same". Not exactly, but...

See: EKK-LM3S811 Texas Instruments MCU, MPU & DSP Development Tools

That's quite a bit smaller board, plus you get a cool looking OLED and a JTAG cable.

The NXPXpresso takes up quite a bit more room than DirtyLude's nice looking breakout boards.
Now back to blinky led and the Eclipse IDE, oh joy!