32bit Arduino the next level from Digilent Inc.

„The chipKIT™ Max32™ combines compatibility with the popular Arduino™ open source hardware prototyping platform with the performance of the Microchip PIC32 microcontroller. The Max32 is the same form factor as the Arduino Mega board and is compatible with standard Arduino™ shields as well as larger shields for use with the Mega boards. It features a USB serial port interface for connection to the IDE and can be powered via USB or an external power supply.

The Max32 board takes advantage of the powerful PIC32MX795F512 microcontroller. This microcontroller features a 32-bit MIPS processor core running at 80Mhz, 512K of flash program memory and 128K of SRAM data memory. In addition, the processor provides a USB 2 OTG controller, 10/100 Ethernet MAC and dual CAN controllers that can be accessed via add-on I/O shields.

The Max32 can be programmed using an environment based on the original Arduino™ IDE modified to support PIC32. In addition, the Max32 is fully compatible with the advanced Microchip MPLAB development environment and the PICKit3 in-system programmer/debugger.

For additional platform-specific support for your chipKIT, please visit: http://www.chipkit.org/forum/.“

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,719,895&Prod=CHIPKIT-MAX32

via http://hackaday.com/2011/05/12/chipkit-max32-an-arduino-mega-upgrade-with-a-pic32-under-the-hood/

BareMetal OS – completely written in assembly

“ BareMetal OS – For a lean, mean, processing machine

BareMetal is a 64-bit OS for x86-64 based computers. The OS is written entirely in Assembly, while applications can be written in Assembly or C/C++. Development of the Operating System is guided by its 3 target segments:

  • High Performance Computing – Act as the base OS for a HPC cluster node. Running advanced computation workloads is ideal for a mono-tasking Operating System.
  • Embedded Applications – Provide a platform for embedded applications running on commodity x86-64 hardware.
  • Education – Provide an environment for learning and experimenting with programming in x86-64 Assembly as well as Operating System fundamentals.

Current version is 0.5.1 – released May 16, 2011.

BareMetal boots via Pure64 and has a command line interface with the ability to load programs/data from a hard drive. Current plans for v0.6.0 call for a more feature-rich C/C++ library for applications, DMA support for Hard Drives, Basic TCP/IP support, as well as general bug fixes and optimizations. The creation of BareMetal was inspired by MikeOS – A 16-bit OS written in Assembly used as a learning tool to show how simple Operating Systems work.“

http://www.returninfinity.com/baremetal.html

via http://hackaday.com/2011/05/27/64-bit-os-written-entirely-in-assembly/