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Is the x86 Ready for Consumer Appliances?
rckymntrider asks: "By now, it's pretty obvious that the movers and shakers of the PC industry are shifting their attention to consumer electronics. Consumers today demand capabilities from their set-top boxes that PCs already deliver (examples: HDTV and gaming). They just don't want a bulky, hot and noisy PC next to their beautiful new plasma TV. Intel, for instance, announced several initiatives for bringing their technology to the media/home automation front, including the establishment of a $200M fund for companies in that arena (small change if you ask me). As a small manufacturer of media-centric devices (I will not name the company and product -- this is not a plug), I have become very frustrated at the availability of hardware for 'consumer' type of applications. ATX? Micro ATX? Too big. Eighty watt CPUs? You're kidding me! Mini ITX? Better but not powerful enough and *way too expensive*. Besides, every new piece of hardware that comes out is practically designed for Windows, and we all know that this is not the operating system that will drive consumer appliances, right? So to sum it up, do you think that the traditional x86 architecture, even with the advent of PCIX and the likes, is suitable for consumer anything? What other platforms do you see on the horizon that could still offer things like High Definition video capability and not double as mini-heaters? Have you ever heard (or envisioned) of a platform designed for powerful but still cost-effective consumer appliances? VIA tried with their EPIA platform but - in my opinion - they failed. Do you think Intel will do it? If not, then who?"
Besides, every new piece of hardware that comes out is practically designed for Windows, and we all know that this is not the operating system that will drive consumer appliances, right?
Well, that's a good question. Windows is sorta big and bulky, but it runs on an awful lot of things. I mean, think about how versatile the code really is, even if it does crash. Take that requirement out of the picture - that the OS has to run on Nteen thousand different hardware configurations, just one, your superblender - and it might not be the worst choice one could make.
But then, I might be completely uninformed. It's just conjecture.
Do you really want to embed windows in a consumer device? Probably not - I certainly wouldn't. Since you are posting on/., you probably have some affection for Linux. But there are plenty of much lighter wight systems around, like QNX, vxWorks, which are also much more suitable for ebedded work. Windows is very, vety heavy. Yes, you can buy a 3GHZ x86 to run Windows - but a 1GHX Risc processor optimised for embedded work wil outperform it by two or three things and undercut its power consumption by 20 times.
Once you have ditched Windows, all the other OSes run on multiple platforms - Arm, PPC, MIPS, Coldfire, Hitachi H series... Linux is certainly available on Arm, PPC. Most of the others are available on more architectures.
Which means that if you chose one of these OSes and (usually) C++, you can move platforms with a recompile. (Not quite true, but near enough for overnment work).
I have experience of the Arm family, and they go like lightning when programmed right - much faster, MHz for MHz, than you would expect compared to Windows. And the power consumption is small to minuscule. And there are some very interesting new CPUs coming along obviously targeted as set-top boxes (sorry, NDA doesn't permit details and Google doesn't know yet). So what you need is for the set-top manufacuters to agree on a common OS like the mobile phome manufacturers have done (how about the same one, as a suggestion) and use the best of the new generation embedded processors.
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