digitalmars.D.announce - Update to Bare Metal STM32F4 (ARM Cortex-M4) LCD Demo Proof of Concept
- Mike (46/46) Jul 20 2017 A few years ago I created a bare metal demo on an ARM Cortex-M4
- Mr.D (2/2) Jul 20 2017 Thanks for your work with bare metal MCUs! I am dreaming that
- Mike (4/6) Jul 20 2017 You already can; it just may not be the most professional
- Andrea Fontana (3/12) Jul 21 2017 It has a lot of potential. I always hope that someone will start
- aberba (2/15) Jul 21 2017 Can't wait to see that day
- =?UTF-8?Q?S=c3=b6nke_Ludwig?= (7/9) Jul 22 2017 I've actually started to implement a GCode processor in D a while ago,
- Andrea Fontana (7/17) Jul 27 2017 D for programming + Vibe for web/mobile interface + Mir for math
- Mike (4/6) Jul 22 2017 Turned out to be a problem in my code, not with the compiler.
- Laeeth Isharc (5/22) Jul 26 2017 Congratulations, Mike.
A few years ago I created a bare metal demo on an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller entirely in D. It was just a demonstration that one could do bare metal programming for microcontrollers in D without any dependencies on C or assembly. It was also a proof of some ideas I had about leveraging compile-time features of D to generate highly-optimized code (both small and fast) for these resource constrained systems. I hit a wall, however, with Issue 14758[0], and ultimately abandoned D for other alternatives. Well, that issue was recently fixed in GDC [1]. In addition, he GDC developers did some work to reduce the number of phony stubs one had to add to the runtime to get a build [2], removed the "shared is volatile" hack, and implemented the `volatileLoad/Store` intrinsics so I no longer need to do volatile access in assembly. So, I decided to give it another try, and updated that demo. You can see the results at https://github.com/JinShil/stm32f42_discovery_demo A few observations: * It is a better experience than it was a few years ago. Fewer dirty hacks are required, and the resulting binary is small and fast. * Everything is in D (inline assembly is D). There's no need for any C or assembly startup code, and no need for silly things like -betterC (i.e. -worseD). If you don't want the overhead from a feature of D, don't use it. * Compile times are quite slow (about 1 minute to get a 3kB binary). Some discussion about that is taking place on the GDC forum [4]. * -O2 and -O3 give me a broken binary, but -O0, -O1, and -Os work well. I'm not sure where I'll go from here. I'm interested in helping an amputee play the drums again, and building my own mechanical keyboard, so I probably won't be spending much more time on this LCD demo, except maybe to help compiler devs debug some issues. However, I might spend some more time with D in the near future, and see how far I can take this. I'm still not as excited as I once was, but it's nice to see these improvements. Anyway, Well done, GDC! Mike [0] - TypeInfo causes excessive binary bloat - https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14758 [1] - Put the TypeInfo name field into a static var - https://github.com/D-Programming-GDC/GDC/pull/505 [2] - Refactor and reformat typeinfo.cc - https://github.com/D-Programming-GDC/GDC/pull/456 [3] - Slow compile-time discussion at GDC forum - http://forum.dlang.org/post/iqryqssxooypdnszmzmg forum.dlang.org
Jul 20 2017
Thanks for your work with bare metal MCUs! I am dreaming that someday I can program smart house IoT automation on D.
Jul 20 2017
On Thursday, 20 July 2017 at 17:09:40 UTC, Mr.D wrote:Thanks for your work with bare metal MCUs! I am dreaming that someday I can program smart house IoT automation on D.You already can; it just may not be the most professional experience. If you have the hardware and the time, do it! Mike
Jul 20 2017
Andrey <avraliov gmail.com> On Friday, 21 July 2017 at 00:27:09 UTC, Mike wrote:On Thursday, 20 July 2017 at 17:09:40 UTC, Mr.D wrote:Thanks for your work!!!!Thanks for your work with bare metal MCUs! I am dreaming that someday I can program smart house IoT automation on D.You already can; it just may not be the most professional experience. If you have the hardware and the time, do it! Mike
Jul 20 2017
On Friday, 21 July 2017 at 00:27:09 UTC, Mike wrote:On Thursday, 20 July 2017 at 17:09:40 UTC, Mr.D wrote:I am stopped by the lack of a system library for work with GPIO, PWM etc specific MCU things.Thanks for your work with bare metal MCUs! I am dreaming that someday I can program smart house IoT automation on D.You already can; it just may not be the most professional experience. If you have the hardware and the time, do it! Mike
Jul 21 2017
On Thursday, 20 July 2017 at 12:23:31 UTC, Mike wrote:A few years ago I created a bare metal demo on an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller entirely in D. It was just a demonstration that one could do bare metal programming for microcontrollers in D without any dependencies on C or assembly. It was also a proof of some ideas I had about leveraging compile-time features of D to generate highly-optimized code (both small and fast) for these resource constrained systems. I hit a wall, however, with Issue 14758[0], and ultimately abandoned D for other alternatives.It has a lot of potential. I always hope that someone will start a 3d Printer firmware written in D for a 32bit microcontroller.
Jul 21 2017
On Friday, 21 July 2017 at 07:40:20 UTC, Andrea Fontana wrote:On Thursday, 20 July 2017 at 12:23:31 UTC, Mike wrote:Can't wait to see that dayA few years ago I created a bare metal demo on an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller entirely in D. It was just a demonstration that one could do bare metal programming for microcontrollers in D without any dependencies on C or assembly. It was also a proof of some ideas I had about leveraging compile-time features of D to generate highly-optimized code (both small and fast) for these resource constrained systems. I hit a wall, however, with Issue 14758[0], and ultimately abandoned D for other alternatives.It has a lot of potential. I always hope that someone will start a 3d Printer firmware written in D for a 32bit microcontroller.
Jul 21 2017
Am 21.07.2017 um 09:40 schrieb Andrea Fontana:It has a lot of potential. I always hope that someone will start a 3d Printer firmware written in D for a 32bit microcontroller.I've actually started to implement a GCode processor in D a while ago, because I was unsatisfied with the open source firmwares that exist. It's more tailored towards CNC routers, but since those are pretty similar that shouldn't be a big problem. The bad news is that I don't have time to work on it anymore and it was still at a relatively early stage.
Jul 22 2017
On Saturday, 22 July 2017 at 18:51:34 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:Am 21.07.2017 um 09:40 schrieb Andrea Fontana:D for programming + Vibe for web/mobile interface + Mir for math would be a win for a 3d printer firmware. Using templates and component programming should fit perfectly a generic-composable firmware for printers. (check delta vs cartesian vs corexy + different stepper drivers + different motors + different boards + ...)It has a lot of potential. I always hope that someone will start a 3d Printer firmware written in D for a 32bit microcontroller.I've actually started to implement a GCode processor in D a while ago, because I was unsatisfied with the open source firmwares that exist. It's more tailored towards CNC routers, but since those are pretty similar that shouldn't be a big problem. The bad news is that I don't have time to work on it anymore and it was still at a relatively early stage.
Jul 27 2017
On Thursday, 20 July 2017 at 12:23:31 UTC, Mike wrote:* -O2 and -O3 give me a broken binary, but -O0, -O1, and -Os work well.Turned out to be a problem in my code, not with the compiler. All optimiziation options work well. Mike
Jul 22 2017
On Thursday, 20 July 2017 at 12:23:31 UTC, Mike wrote:A few years ago I created a bare metal demo on an ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller entirely in D. It was just a demonstration that one could do bare metal programming for microcontrollers in D without any dependencies on C or assembly. It was also a proof of some ideas I had about leveraging compile-time features of D to generate highly-optimized code (both small and fast) for these resource constrained systems. I hit a wall, however, with Issue 14758[0], and ultimately abandoned D for other alternatives. Well, that issue was recently fixed in GDC [1]. In addition, he GDC developers did some work to reduce the number of phony stubs one had to add to the runtime to get a build [2], removed the "shared is volatile" hack, and implemented the `volatileLoad/Store` intrinsics so I no longer need to do volatile access in assembly. So, I decided to give it another try, and updated that demo. You can see the results at https://github.com/JinShil/stm32f42_discovery_demoCongratulations, Mike. https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6pn31c/d_on_bare_metal_stm32f4_redux/ Could someone post to Hacker News? I don't have enough rep for it to propagate.
Jul 26 2017