PIC32 Performance? CPU for OS development?

[swinginguitar]

The further into the vortex of PICs/hardware/etc I get, the more I start to think "it would sure be nice to have a dedicated operating system to handle the recurring tasks like I/O, files, memory management, UI/displays, etc".

So I started wondering if the newer MIPS based PIC32 chips are worth the effort it would take to develop such an OS. ANy of you have any experience or thoughts on memory/CPU/other limitations of these?

It's still technically a uController...*BUT* there appears to be support for displays, USB, ethernet etc  fairly well implemented (as well as the C library in general)...and although I am still plowing through the data "sheet", it appears that program and data memory can each be assigned to the other (?), which would be good news because my fear would be running out of program memory as the system got larger and larger....

Whatcha think? Would it be better to develop on a more "capable" CPU (any recommendations?)...don't want something as complex as x86 at this point....

[tommy.genes]

Prompted by your post, a Google search yielded this (within a few hops)...

http://adafruit.com/products/469?gclid=CJ659av757ICFcuh4AodbwYAng
http://www.pinguino.cc/

Although I don't know anything about the strength of that community versus Arduino, it would be worth at least looking into it. Even if they don't have everything you want/need, I'm sure they'd be interested in learning about / helping with / taking advantage of anything you'd develop on your own.

-- T. G. --

[cloudscapes]

I think I once came across there being a limitation on PIC32's where you can't execute code from external ram, or DMA. It would probably limit things quite severely, OS-wise. I might be mistaken though.

[swinginguitar]

I think I once came across there being a limitation on PIC32's where you can't execute code from external ram, or DMA. It would probably limit things quite severely, OS-wise. I might be mistaken though.

That's what I'm trying to ascertain.....I keep seeing little hints in the docs about being able to re-program the flash at runtime (which would make program loading possible), and I saw another hint about being able to allocate (internal?) RAM to program memory....even so, might not be enough.

thanks for weighing in, guys. I'll keep reading....

Is there another chipset that would be more viable to develop on? again, the allure here was integrated USB/ethernet/etc and built in C library.