Jumping from microcontroller to DSPs

Question

I have been using microcontroller like ARM Cortex M4 32bit based microcontrollers. Now I am thinking to move towards DSPs, but I really don't know how things work in Processors and DSPs, I mean in case of microcontrollers usually you have RAM/Flash integrated in the same chip, you simply use a Programmer/Debugger and develop your systems.

In case of Processors/DSPs, I don't know how to integrate RAM and ROM/Flash and than how to and where to upload my program, I guess it would be the Flash/ROM which will hold my program or the processor will also require some startup code to start fetching data from ROM?

Lets take any example say, I have a TI C2000 Piccolo series 32bit DSP, 10kB RAM and 10kB ROM/Flash.

Now -

1. How to integrate them?
2. Which one need to be programmed ROM and DSP or only ROM?
3. How to program specifically if I am using Piccolo?
4. Any kick Start material/tutorials to start "Hello world" with DSP/Processor? I am not talking about BeagleBone or RasberryPi etc. as they are operating system based ready made solutions.

Answer 1

[Full disclosure: I am a TI employee who works in the C2000 group.]

The Piccolo series, like all C2000 products, are microcontrollers that use a C28x DSP for their CPU. Although it has DSP features and architecture, the C28x also does everything that a general-purpose CPU does. Using a C2000 MCU is basically the same as using MSP430, TMS570, or any other MCU -- you write code in C, program it to the flash using TI-provided or third-party tools, and let it run.

For something like the C55x series, which has no on-board flash, your code needs to go in an external memory. The on-chip boot ROM has options for loading code from serial peripherals or from an external memory interface. That's about all I can tell you there; I don't know much about C55x.