Propeller Microcontroller

The Propeller is a multi-core microcontroller by Parallax.

Specs

• 8 cores (cogs)
• 32-bit architecture
• Max clock speed 80MHz (note that Spin code executes much slower than this)
• Each core has 2K SRAM for programs and data
• 32KB EEPROM used to store programs
• Programmable by serial interface

• VGA output

Windows development tools

• Parallax home page
• Wikispaces Propeller Wiki, lots of useful info

• Wikipedia entry, good detail

Languages

The Propeller can be programmed in assembler or Spin. There are also third party C compilers available.

Assembler

The Propeller has a small instruction set and is well documented in the Propeller manual.

Spin

A bytecode interpreted language by Parallax. Most of the high level libraries are written in Spin. Each cog can fit a copy of the interpreter in its SRAM, but bytecode is read from hub memory which slows down execution. See the wikipedia page for details.

• BST (Brad’s Spin Tool) is a cross-platform tool suite for developing Spin programs.

C

There are two C implementations

• Imagecraft make a commercial compiler, $99 for non-commercial use

• Catalina is an open source compiler currently in beta. It is based on the lcc compiler and comes with a complete ieee floating point implementation

Other open/free development tools

• Program loader script
• Homespun Spin compiler

• Propasm – Propeller assembler, written in Java

Docs

• Documentation including Propeller manual, board schematics, lab exercises.

• Propeller protobard designs for the beginner