Is there any detailed comparison between Metaware and GCC toolchain for ARC?

[maikelmeyers]

Hi,

I wonder if someone already did some profiling/comparison between the two toolchains. What is the main disadvantage of GCC over Metaware? I see that using the GCC toolchain has the advantage that once learned it can be used for many architectures (Cortex M0).
What features does Metaware have, that GCC has not? For example is there a similar approach in GCC like Metaware debugger Rascal to connect the debugger to an RTL simulation?
How fast is the code and what's the difference in the code density?

Thanks!
Maik

[fbedard]

Hi Maik,

Please see foss-for-synopsys-dwc-arc-processors/ARC-Development-Systems-Forum#2 (comment) for a high level comparison between MetaWare and GNU toolchain.

We are planning to add a wiki page to cover some of the key differences between the toolchains. I'll come back and update this issue when that has been done (ETA is next 1-2 weeks).

Our efforts on GNU are more focused around the linux use case and as a premium toolchain MetaWare will generally offer better code size and performance for bare metal use case.

Finally, GDB connects to hardware targets using the openOCD GDB server and I'm not aware of any of our hardware engineers here having tried to use it with RTL simulators (all use MDB).

Francois

[drrll]

@fbedard
Sorry to hijack this thread, but I'm working with both gcc-arc and Metaware compiler at this time. I'm wondering, is it possible to link a static library lib.a compiled with Metaware compiler with application code compiled with gcc-arc?

[iguryanov]

short answer - yes, with some restrictions it works.
I'll dust off my notes and reply you with a summary in a day or two.

[iguryanov]

here are the steps to make combined build:

• if needed, build fine tuned MWDT libraries with buildlib, either pointing it to tcf file or providing all HW options in command line
• copy resulting libmw.a, maybe other libraries (like libdsp.a) to your project location.
• build your application object files with arc-elf32-gcc, pointing to MWDT headers when needed.
• link resulting application with arc-elf32-gcc (important, use gcc as the driver).
• use -nodefaultlibs option, then list standard gnu libraries, your libraries, and mwdt libraries at the end.
• don't forget to add --specs=nosys.specs option to link with i/o stubs.

[drrll]

@iguryanov
Thanks a lot for the pointers to get me started.

I'm seeing a lot of
uses different e_flags (0x0) fields than previous modules (0x5) when I'm trying to link Metaware compiled lib.a with arc-elf32-gcc compiled object file. Linking using arc-elf32-gcc.

I built the library with em7d_voice_audio.tcf, and -mcpu=em4_dmips when compiling the application code with arc-elf32-gcc.

Any tips?

[abrodkin]

@maikelmeyers @drrll do you still have any questions or problems regarding this issue or we may close it for now?