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MSP430 vs Stellaris® ARM® Cortex™-M3 MCUs

Robert Åkerblom-Andersson
Intellectual 550 points

Hi I have been looking at the MSP430* series for a while now and just bought a programmer and development board a week ago. Now today and yesterday I've been looking more at the Stellaris® ARM® Cortex™-M3 MCUs and have been a little surprised since before I didn't think that they were a competitor to the MSP430, I thought that the ARM processor was a big step up in price etc. But when I read "from $1 to 1 GHz" I started to wonder...

So is the Stellaris MCU's a direct compeditor to the MSP430 series? Pros and Cons...

And I also wonder since I'm an Linux fan at the desktop and server side and currently studding to be an electronics engineer in embedded systems the words "32 bit" and "ARM" sound interesting for usage of an Linux kernel, so my question is if it is common to use Linux on these devices? I also order an Beagle Board some day ago since I have wanted one for a long time and that rasices an other question, how is this comparesion:

Stellaris® ARM® Cortex™-M3 MCUs vs C2000 vs OMAP or DaVinci, pros and cons...

I know that some people will say "it depens on what application", and I know that of cource but if we look at it from an general prespective and also I could give some sample application:
Webradio
Multimedia Player (is OMAP the or is Davinci also good at this? I have read some where that Davinci is best for recording devices but I don't know about playing things)
HID (Human Interface Devices like a keyboard or a mouse)
Small webserver
"Simple" system with some sensors and an hd44780 display (is this a competion between MSP430 and Stellaris?)
Ångström Linux with smaller X applications (can any of the Stellaris pull this of or is this only for the OMAP processors? May Davinci or some other TI processor I have forgot?)

I'm sorry for making this a long thread since I know some people thinks it hard to read and answer, but feel free to answer just a smaller part if you don't want to answer it all at one time.. [:)]

Regards

  • 0
    TI__Expert 7845 points

    1. Stellaris MCUs are definitely not a direct competitor to the MSP430 because of a different core, power and peripherals.

    2. You can run uCLinux on the tempest class stellaris microcontollers using the EPI module, but not full blown Linux kernels:
    http://www.luminarymicro.com/scratch/tempest.html

    3. Multimedia Player (is OMAP the or is Davinci also good at this? I have read some where that Davinci is best for recording devices but I don't know about playing things)?
    You may want to post this on the OMAP/Davinci forums:
    http://community.ti.com/forums/33.aspx
    http://community.ti.com/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=12

    4.
    HID:
    Use stellaris DustDevil controllers with a USB peripheral on it:
    http://www.luminarymicro.com/scratch/dustdevil.html
    or
    use MSP430F552x MCU with a USB peripheral on it:
    http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/msp430f5529.html

    Small Webserver:
    Use Stellaris Fury or Tempest class controllers with built in ethernet peripheral
    or
    use MSP430 and see the following application:
    http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/litabsmultiplefilelist.tsp?&literatureNumber=slaa137a

    Sensors/HD44780:
    Use a Stellaris or MSP430 microcontroller with a high pin count that will accomodate those sensors or drive that LCD via GPIOs

    5. Linux with smaller X applications (can any of the Stellaris pull this of or is this only for the OMAP processors? May Davinci or some other TI processor I have forgot?):
    Again, this is a question more suited for the higher end processors like OMAP or Davinci

     

  • 0 in reply to Harman
    Intellectual 550 points

    Yes okey I have a little better look at it all now. But as you said at 4th both Stellaris and MSP430 can be used for the same things... And I prefer to choose one product and learn that good rather that multiple MCU even if it might be a little more expensive in some cases.. That was my thought.. But if I say like this then, when would I choose an Stellaris processor instead of an MSP430 (if I don't have any Stellaris tools but have MSP430 development tools from before)

    Or is it no real reason to use Stellaris if I like the MSP430? My question is since I don't want to have to many different architectures, that was why I first thought that Stellaris ARM would be great since many "hi-end" processor are ARM and I need thoose as well. But at the same time the MSP430 looks really nice as well and I just got my MSP430 development tools yesterday. (I come from PIC and AVR before but would like to give TI a try)

  • 0 in reply to Robert Åkerblom-Andersson
    TI__Expert 7845 points

    I would say that for any application you are trying to develop, you want to see which device has hardware tools and software that are ready to be used. Specifically in your case:
    HID:
    Stellaris aleady has USB driver library in their stellarisware software and they have kits to do this already, but the MSP430 does not.

    Small Webserver:
    Stellaris aleady has Ethernet driver library and stacks in their stellarisware software and they have kits to do this already, but the MSP430 does not.

    Sensors/HD44780:
    Both MSP430 and Stellaris have examples on how to use sensors and drive LCDs, but not specifically for your case

    Overall, it depends on how much you have to develop your application and the learning curve that you are willing to undertake :)

  • 0 in reply to Harman
    Intellectual 550 points

    Okey sounds like the Stellaris have some pros then even thought it can be done with the MSP430 as well, I guess the best thing in the "MSP430 vs Stellaris" for the MSP430 side is the power consumption. [:)]

  • 0 in reply to Harman
    Intellectual 870 points

    You know, TI should really make a bit more of an effort to have Stellaris info available through the TI.com web sites ...

    Also, that information about the four generations of Stellaris silicon (e.g. DustDevil and Tempest most recently) would be really good to see public on the Luminary website. It's been a puzzle to sort out what's meant by those code words, which appear all over.  Those pages look kind of temporary (URL has .../scratch/... in it) and can't be found from the front page, but the information there is quite handy. (Could be a bit better of course, though. Which chips have the 15 MHz +/- 50% built-in oscillators? Newer ones are more accurate...)

    And it's sad that the Texas Instruments Embedded Processors Wiki hardly says a thing about those parts, or about Cortex-M3 for that matter. As if to say that TI doesn't really "do" Stellaris, or Cortex-M3, yet.  Which should not be the case...

    I can understand the Luminary team doesn't want to get lost in a much bigger TI, but so far there appears to have been a shortage of effort on the part of the rest of TI. I've seen the LM3S data sheets get updated, not all of which is cosmetic (yay!), and that's forward motion despite characterization still being incomplete (e.g. for power consumption).  I'll hope that some of the newer parts will be coming from TI fabs too; there's a lot of forward motion that wouldn't yet be externally visible.

    In fact, this thread is an all-too-significant percentage of the solid technical information about Stellaris parts I've seen on TI websites ... and it's perhaps more technical marketing data than real tech. Please improve that.

  • 0
    Intellectual 870 points
    Stellaris® ARM® Cortex™-M3 MCUs vs C2000 vs OMAP or DaVinci, pros and cons...

    OMAP and DaVinci are ARM based but not microcontrollers ... they are Linux-capable, rely heavily on external memory, and are what you should use if you've got heavy video or application processing to do, possibly with help from a C6000 class DSP. They're five to ten times more expensive than Stellaris too. Especially with OMAP, these are fairly powerful; good choices for multipurpose platform work. There's a good selection of tools vendors.

    C2000 is more DSP-ish than Stellaris, and obviously lighter weight than C6000 class DSPs. They're flash-based microcontrollers and are thus at least somewhat comparable to Stellaris. Tools are pretty tightly coupled to TI.

    A better comparison might be the TMS470 chips, which TI has deemphasized for new applications. Those were based on a preceding generation of ARM based microcontrollers, ARM7TDMI. There are a boatload of vendors selling ARM7TDMI microcontrollers ... Atmel, NXP, ST, Samsung, and many more. Many of those vendors also have Cortex-M3 products now. Stellaris is much more modern (ARMv7M architecture not ARMv4T) with more modern peripherals (Ethernet stands out) but is similar enough that a detailed tech comparison could be informative. You have several tools vendors to choose from.

    $SUBJECT mentions MSP430. To my taste those are kind of quirky; the newest chips are starting to use address space extenders. There are a few non-TI tools options. If you need ultra-low power that's probably a good choice. They compete with 8-bit micros like 8051 based stuff (sigh) from almost everyone (including TI/Chipcon), AVR, PIC, and so on; I don't think any offer as much compute power as most Stellaris parts.

    As they say, "your mileage may vary". I think the Stellaris parts are interesting because they're ARM-based and because Cortex-M3 is growing an interesting ecosystem.  But it all depends on what problems you're trying to solve.

  • 0 in reply to DavidBrownell9026
    Intellectual 550 points

    Thanks for a good answer DavidBrownell, I also agree in the fact that much information in missing at TI.com

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