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What I want to know is if the SqueezeBox itself can run linux.

No - it has a fast 32-bit processor with probably enough RAM and flash, but it's a special architecture intended for low latency, multithreaded, embedded applications. It is a harvard architecture with segmented memory, great for timing determinism, I/O, and DSP performance but not suitable for a large OS. more on the processor..

I was picturing a massively parallel array of little PDIP Ubicom SX microcontrollers, all running at 50 MIPS. http://www.ubicom.com/processors/sx-family.htm

[begin silly] I don't know exactly what it'd take, but I'd think 50 8-bit operations might be able to handle most floating point operations.

That'd mean each SX could handle 1 MFLOP... so we only need a million of them. At 3$ each... with radio-shack proto-boards... it would only cost around $10 million including assembly. [end silly]

Note that they don't specify the bus width of the SX-8 system. Is it 32 or 64 bit? More?

The Atmel AVR is probably the most powerful (as in, raw performance) line of 8-bit MCUs, and there is a ton of code and utilities out there.

Actually I'm pretty sure the SX/Ubicom processors hold that title - certainly way faster that Atmel's and Microchip's 8-bit parts anyway. The ip2022 is 160 MIPS (@ 160MHz) running a PIC-like instruction set on an improved, pipelined architecture. That part can run two 10 base T ethernet MACs at full speed in software.

I'll comment on this since I've reverse-engineered both products.

They accomplish EXACTLY the same thing but the two products run completely different hardware AND software. Linksys does this so that they can pit one vendor against another until neither makes any money.

The wireless gaming adaptor uses a MIPS clone from SiliconData with integrated PCI and ethernet interfaces and a Mini-PCI 802.11g card.

The WET54G uses a Ubicom processor (same as what's in the WET-11 except 160MHz instead of 120MHz. It has a Davicom 10/100 MAC and a Cardbus 802.11g card.

Both probably cost exactly the same to produce, but having two designs gives leverage on the supply side and the ability to justify two vastly different price points on the shelf.

There are a LOT of ways to do it these days. As with any CPU, you have to very carefully consider your volume expectations, r&d budget, and performance/feature requirements. The most MIPS for the dollar is probably the Ubicom ip2022 processor (120 or 160 MIPS for $10-$15 ea). This chip is used in the Squeezebox as well as some wireless access points and birdges. The ip2k is interesting because of its very fast interrupt latency which enables it do the ethernet MAC in software.

However there are other products such as the Rabbit platform which have royalty free software and cheaper development kits, so they're more suitable for small volume or lower speed applications such as control systems. It is a multi-chip design with external ethernet and memory though, so not cheap per-unit.

Or, if you want to attach the nodes to Ethernet, the Ubicom IP2022. It's still reasonably inexpensive, but has 64K of Flash, 20K of RAM, and built-in 10baseT Ethernet support. That way you don't have to invent any new protocols to wire the things up.

The only drawback of the IP2022 is that the SDK is somewhat expensive. If you just want basic tools (a compiler, assembler, linker, and debugger), you can use the GNU tools. But the SDK includes the Ethernet driver, TCP/IP stack, small HTTP server, etc., which would be useful for an application like this.

Disclaimer: I've worked for Ubicom for a little over four months. Before that, I was a satisfied customer, having designed their SX part into the first generation ReplayTV box to handle IR remote functions.

Big whoop. Ubicom makes a damn fine embedded TCP/IP platform, and it's all on one chip, with built-in Ethernet using a software MAC. And it's $13.

Disclaimer: I cannot even imagine YOUR scope market. The following message reflects my own preferences, technical and logistical abilities etc. Moreover, any decent scope costs terribly.

I believe the 50 MHz bandwidth is the minimal requirement for debugging the modern equipment (I own 250-MHz scope and in the past had a lot of troubles trying to debug the 5 MHz clocked devices with 5-MHz bandwidth scope. It means that the sampling frequency is at least 100 MHz which excludes any cheap software implementations and requires some PGA.

I also believe that the scope should be a standalone device with optional PC interface.

If you can be satisfied with 33 MHz sampling rate you may use the Scenix/Ubicom SX 100-MHz microprocessor to control any ADC and any graphical LCD display. External ADC clocking will be needed. Also don't forget that the fastest way to make a loop is to open it, so you will need 384 bytes of program ROM to get 128 dots (Maximim for Scenix RAM) at maximum speed. If you need more then look at Ubicom IP2022.

It may be a nice pen-sized scope. You may be proud of it.

For additional info: look at Ubicom website for microprocessors, Philips for ADC chips and Webring for PIC and Scenix related projects (A lot of! You may even find the ready scope project there).

Ubicom (a.k.a Scenix) has an evaluation kit for the SX52BD processor together with a Realtek ethernet NIC. A TCP/IP stack is provided, with assembly source.

Ethernet SX Stack Evaluation Kit

It's not that expensive ($200 i think), and a lot of fun to play with, since it has 20 I/O ports.

Mikael