Suggest next Teensy with Cortex M7

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Digikey also sells the board ($84, quantity available: 0) https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/nxp-usa-inc/MIMXRT1050-EVK/568-13517-ND/7646293
and presumably MBED will have software support "real soon". I did lots of experimenting with MBED K64 before the T3.5/3.6 beta release.

I received the NXP 600 mhz cortex M7 evaluation board from digikey. Powered it up and LED's are on, and delivered application changes user LED as board tilts. It's consuming 144 ma. No MBED compiler support yet, so it's only decorative.
 
What is your take on MicoPython?

I think it is stable enough and Adafruit is pushing it hard. This lowers the bar even farther. I not sure new hobbyist will bother with C.
 
Solderless breadboard compatibility is essential, but not for every signal. Like Teensy 3.2, 3.5, 3.6 only about 20-40 signals will come to breadboard friendly pins. I'm considering a variety of ideas for how to make the rest available, but honestly, not very concerned about that part at this extremely early stage.

Like every other conversation about future Teensy, I'm sure there will be plenty of talk about form factors, connectors, pin spacing, and so on. Feel free to discuss. I am listening. But don't for one second imagine I'm going to abandon breadboard compatibility for a high density connector like Intel did with Edison.

How a high-density flat-cable connector at the end of the board which can connect to a breakout board for all the rest of the signals?
This could also work as a solder-free way to attach prop shields, audio boards and other fun stuff.
 
Many questions. Here's some quick answers...

Only NXP can say for sure about their memory design choices, but it's easy to imagine the likely answer: cost.

I need to be careful about the NDA, so I'm not going to comment about questions involving the chip's details or anything I might know about their plans for future chips in this product line.

External SDRAM is one of the very difficult choices for a new Teensy. The situation is similar to Teensy 3.6, where FlexBus consumes many of the I/O pins and makes several important features unavailable. So I'm leaning against SDRAM (or keeping those pins unused). It simply costs too much, in terms of lost functionality.

My hope is to move towards integrating conditionally compiled semaphone or mutux support into the core library and many of the most commonly used Arduino libs. I do not intend to make any RTOS mandatory, but quite a lot could be done in the many libraries so they work much better when used with an RTOS. This is the sort of thing best discussed on its own thread. But I will say right now, the 2 limiting factors are dev time to do this, and having RTOS users willing to help test unstable/alpha/beta code. Both of these always seem so elusive...

Release of bootloader chips and a reference board will almost certainly look similar to prior times. Never before have I managed to get these done right at the Teensy board's release. There's always a ton of stuff to do leading up to the release, and then usually a few months of highly urgent software work following. I'm pretty sure a first Cortex M7 board will be similar.

All the applications involving camera in the official NXP examples use the SDRAM. Would it be possible to use the internal SRAM as a temporary buffer for these applications? Or even a QSPI flash?
 
Ok, maybe it's time to drop a hint about future Teensy.... (hope everyone is sitting down)

This chip is very likely to become the core of Teensy 4.0 sometime in 2018.

http://www.nxp.com/products/microco...x-rt-series-crossover-processor:IMX-RT-SERIES

Yes, you're reading that right, a 600 MHz Cortex-M7 is coming! :)

Wow, this is fantastic, I had not read this message and coincidentally a few days ago I was reading about the i.MX RT1020 on the NXP website, to use it in some of my new developments, it also seems interesting the i.MX 233 although this It is older.

If using an NXP RT in the new Teensy 4.0 would be great, I currently use Teensy 3.6 to test and debug my developments before making custom PCBs with MK66 LQFP and I find it very useful.

It would be interesting if you can maintain some compatibility between Teensy 3.6 and Teensy 4.0, although I suppose it will be difficult because they look like very different microcontrollers, MK66 vs. i.MX RT.

I'm following the NXP website on the RT1020, but not yet available, only the RT1050.

Does anyone know the RT1050 is compatible with RT1020? I guess Teensy 4.0 will install RT1050, so a BGA. If there is software compatibility between RT1050 and RT1020, I will use Teensy 4.0 to develop and test software, and custom boards with RT1020 LQFP.

Some news about when Teensy 4.0 will be available, price, libraries, compatibility, confirmed that you will use an i.MX RT1050 ...?

regards
 
Paul,

Thank you so much for all the work you do. I love the Teensy 3.6. And I'm excited to hear about the future of Teensy with the Cortex M7 Teensy 4.0. Sounds awesome. Thanks for sharing a glimpse into the Teensy future.
I know it's still early, but are you thinking that it will have the same physical size as the 3.6? Or will it be a different form factor?

—Robert
 
i remembered it cuz i said it :p

yeah its weird, he/she/it was sitting on the forums since november, makes me wonder how many bots are chilling here :p
 
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Any news about the future Teensy 4?

Next month, at the beginning of March, the new NXP i.MX RT1020 microcontroller, Cortex M7, 500 Mhz will be available. In March available to request samples, in June in production, seem with very cheap price, cheaper than current MK64 or MK66.

I want to order some samples, and make a small evaluation board. Now I have the RT1050 in test, with the NXP evaluation board, and it works very well, an extraordinarily powerful microcontroller. Both RT1020 and RT1050 may be a very good option for new Teensy 4.

.
 
.

Any news about the future Teensy 4?

Next month, at the beginning of March, the new NXP i.MX RT1020 microcontroller, Cortex M7, 500 Mhz will be available. In March available to request samples, in June in production, seem with very cheap price, cheaper than current MK64 or MK66.

I want to order some samples, and make a small evaluation board. Now I have the RT1050 in test, with the NXP evaluation board, and it works very well, an extraordinarily powerful microcontroller. Both RT1020 and RT1050 may be a very good option for new Teensy 4.

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once I saw they have no DSP, my interest became limited.
Knowing the time the T3.6 will still need get full USB host and native Ethernet support, I'm not keen to get a 2d graphics acceleration (without SW support)
Yes, I would like more speed, more SRAM on a single MCU, more I2S ports, but I would really prefer that PJRC/community focus on completion of T3.5/6 functionality.
 
once I saw they have no DSP, my interest became limited
...

I'm curious what you mean by this. The I.MX RT implements ARMv7-M so it should at least have the same DSP-like capabilities of the current M4/teensy 3.x with some added goodies.
 
my pioneer NEX 4100 runs android 4.2.2 at 1ghz on i.MX6, and dual core i.MX6 on my 6000NEX, can i load teensy 4 code on it? :p lol joke
 
Was perhaps a typo or auto correction error. These new thingies seem to have no DAC which is a big no-no for me.

It was not a typo
looking at
https://www.nxp.com/products/proces...processor-with-arm-cortex-m7-core:i.MX-RT1050
I see only FPU but no DSP
I see a 2d graphics acceleration, which could be useful for signal processing and is probably better documented than the RPI one, but I doubt that a supporting library will be available soon (see Ethernet on T3.6).
OK, someone interested can always develop a library.
 
It was not a typo
looking at
https://www.nxp.com/products/proces...processor-with-arm-cortex-m7-core:i.MX-RT1050
I see only FPU but no DSP
I see a 2d graphics acceleration, which could be useful for signal processing and is probably better documented than the RPI one, but I doubt that a supporting library will be available soon (see Ethernet on T3.6).
OK, someone interested can always develop a library.

It has the same DSP instruction support as M4. Main changes are wider bus (64-bit), faster memory, higher clock rate and big caches.
It is more energy efficient which allows the higher clock rate.
 
From the marketing literature:
These essential capabilities with enablers like graphics and display support and seamless connectivity increase system-level costs and extend time-to-market.

I would think you'd want to decrease system cost and reduce time to market, but that's just me.
Surely, American marketers are well paid enough to actually write what they mean?
 
But does the Pi Zero has deterministic low-level I/O usable without an OS and additional peripherals like external RAM? As far as I can see the i.MX RT is still a microcontroller while the RasPi is a microcomputer.

Would it be possible to use something like RasPi as if it were a microcontroller? No OS, just arduino-like libraries? Has anyone done something like that?
 
Technically, it is for sure possible. If you have a compiler and tool chain for that specific CPU on the RasPi and if you know how to write code which boots this CPU and initializes all peripherals.
 
You can do RPi in Bare Metal, but I found the community support is a fraction of what's available with Arduino-derived systems, and the RPI platform didn't seem like a very good fit for a complex embedded project like the automotive ECU I'm working on.
 
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