Re: [Gumstix-users] Dummy level questions

[Arthur M. <ar...@ar...>]

It depends how much traffic you expect to see between processors. There 
are varies token-ring standards out there, used over good old RS-232. If 
your traffic is low, this is a really simple system to set up. If your 
traffic is higher, your processors waste a lot of effort pushing bytes 
not meant for them :-(

Having a brief look at the developers manual, that NSSP port looks 
interesting. It sounds like it would be quite easy to set up some kind 
of star type network (SPI?). If all the chips will be sitting close 
together, you don't even need all that voltage level shifting that most 
protocols use - just run the whole lot on TTL. Ethernet is great for 
long distance stuff (feet not inches), but a bit heavy duty. I'd guess 
that you could get away with something a bit lighter.

I like the tiny cluster idea. Especially once Bluetooth is ready. Spread 
your processing across all the processors in range. Nice.

Arthur