Linux support for STM32F103ZET6

[trajanoroberto]

Posted on January 28, 2011 at 02:14

Linux support for STM32F103ZET6

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on May 17, 2011 at 14:23

Pick a more appropriate platform, one with more memory, more horsepower and an MMU.

A 72 MHz Cortex M3, with 512 KB of FLASH and 64 KB of RAM probably won't cut it. How big is the last Linux Kernel you built?

[trajanoroberto]

Posted on May 17, 2011 at 14:23

Thank you for your response.

We do not have experience with Linux. Could you please suggest an appropriate Cortex STM Microcontroller? As for Linux build and development tool (C & C++ language) could you please recommend a commercial tool? Any out-of-the-box tool free available out there? Thanks TR

[Kuikui]

Posted on May 17, 2011 at 14:23 Hi, You just can't run Linux on this chip. Linux requires a MCU with an MMU. Give a try to uCLinux, which is a ''reduced'' version of Linux, dedicated to MCU without MMU. ST released an app-note and packages for running uCLinux on STM32. Nevertheless, I think you should precise what you wanna do with all this ... If you really want Linux, you will need deep experience on it before reaching your goals.

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on May 17, 2011 at 14:23

What is it that you think Linux can do for you, that a more micro-controller appropriate RTOS can't?

Given your Linux experience, pick ANY distribution and build a kernel and file-system on your PC, with the feature set you want, and see just how big a foot-print it has. It won't be a one-to-one translation for the ARM, but you'll at least get an order of magnitude, or ball-park figure. Find a distribution YOU like, and see what ARM boards it supports, and the expected speed/resources on those boards. In fact Google some ARM based Linux boards doing the kinds of things you want to do, and see what kinds of resources they suck up. The STM32, like most ST parts (STR7 and 9 for instance), has lackluster external bus performance. You really need the foot-print of your active code to fit on-chip. Even then the onboard flash will mostly be chugging along at 24 MHz, not 72 MHz. The flash is faster on the STM32F2xx devices, but none of them has any cache or MMU. I've got ARM926 parts running in the 200-400MHz range, with 32-64MB of SDRAM(133MHz), and 128MB-1GB of NAND flash. The compressed kernel for a fairly mundane feature set is ~2MB, with the in memory foot-print at least twice that and RAM requirements significantly higher than that, and a filesystem ~10MB. Those chips have caches, and an MMU. The STM32 would have the responsiveness of a snail, try looking at the ST SPEAR parts instead. ucLinux might be a route, but I'm not sure what you want to do, and if that might be at least as viable on half-a-dozen other RTOS's.