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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?"
They sold off their x86 Geode platform to AMD a year or so back.
The Geode is in plenty of consumer devices, if you care to tear them open to take a look.
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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.
I dunno, that sounds a lot like the old argument "windows is crashy because it supports so much hardware, MacOS is stable because the hardware is tightly controlled" -- then linux came along and provided much stability, and greater hardware support than windows (more processors than just x86, anyway).
I've written programs on VAX, Dec Alpha, RS6000, PowerPC, PA-RISC, 6502, Sparc, Ultra Sparc, 68000 and every version of x86 since the original PC. Really, don't get hung up about x86. In the grand scheme, it's just another CPU. Unit cost, energy cost in a million unit device will more than out weigh nearly anything that might make you choose x86.
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If you're asking if modern consumer OSes based on the x86 range are bullet-proof and idiot-proof enough to power a device as easy to use as an answering machine or VCR, then I'd have to say no, these are still hobbyist devices.
It's the primary thing that keeps x86 out of the "appliance" market. No one wants to wait for their device - be it refrigerator, TV, etc. - to boot before being able to use it fully.
... and ...
Before you argue that many machines don't need to boot, please keep in mind that MANY do, and can't stay on 24-7. Hell, even the ones that can should shutdown or hibernate in order to keep peoples' electric bills sane.
Anyway, x86 needs to defeat these hurdles to compete in the embedded arena:
a) boot a kernel that is bigger than 1M (like ARM can) - why? because if you want to boot a device FAST, you use an uncompressed kernel; and uncompressed kernels are BIG
b) get over the POST time - POST'ing on most motherboards (yes, even VIA EPIAs), takes 10 seconds or more. I know firsthand because our app was initially built on one[an EPIA-M]. Asking a user to wait for 10 seconds for the Hardware to POST, PLUS another 10-20 for the OS to boot is highly unacceptable. Mark another win for ARM here...
Anyway, the answer to your question is ARM. It's Intel's existing answer. Have a look at an XScale CPU solution young grasshopper.
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The issue here is whether the x86 platform's issues, like excessive heat and power consumption and the requirement for a separate memory controller, outweigh its advantages, like the large variety of hardware already available to interface to everything under the sun and the fact that it's a well-understood architecture.
Now that's out of the way, here's my two cents: the x86 architecture, or at least the implementations currently available, simply isn't cut out for most embedded applications. While x86's limitations have been addressed with lots of extensions (MMX, SSE, 3dNow, etc.), those end up adding complexity and drawing more power than a chip designed without those limitations. Also, the x86's pitiful lack of registers compared to architectures like the PowerPC (another choice for embedded applications that require a good deal of power) means that almost any complex operations mean lots of going in and out of cache, or, worse, main memory. While x86 is acceptable in an environment with a 300W+ power supply and user tolerance for a good deal of noise, it won't cut it in your VCR. x86 might see some use in applications which require rapid development and lots of power, but in most cases there is already a good solution available.
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Dialogic Telephony E1/T1 cards have used 386 chips as embedded chips (mainly for encoding/decoding) for quite a while now. The architecture is obviously good enough for the job.
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"if you build it, he will come." x86 the architecture itself may be ready for the set-top box and the digital streaming stereo thingy, and good software foundations are out there (for appliances, think QNX Neutrino, embedded Linux, PalmOS 6, and so forth), and there are low power chips like Geodes and C3s. (I've even heard that people are experimenting with Transmeta's processors for appliances.) So the architecture is ready and the software is ready. But there aren't a lot of people out there who seem really interested in making good hardware (mainly motherboards) to fit this niche, and I think that's mostly what the author is frustrated with. (Mind you, VIA is going in the right direction with their new nano-ITX board, if only they'd drop their price a whole heap.)
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Besides, if you were making an appliance, I'm sure you could write your own BIOS (take LinuxBIOS, for example). That'd make it boot instantly into any size kernel image you care.
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x86 is only one of about 60 different processors that can be used in consumer electronic devices.
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The only question that needs to be asked about whether or not x86 can/should/will be used in consumer electronics devices is the per-unit price.
If you can't get an x86-based chip for integration into your embedded system for, say, $10 - $15, then its not going to happen. The competition in this sector is too fierce. Other, nice, lower power, fun-to-use (RISC, even...), easy-to-integrate processors are out there, which will definitely give the x86 a run for the money.
The only thing x86 has going for it in this space is the development realm - yeah, its great to cross-compile for your target processor, but in the end, its also fun to just run the same binary you just built and run on your PC.
x86 has to get cheaper. Show me an x86-based chip that has tons of SOC-style integrated peripherals, and I'll show you a chip that is just too expensive to compete with the other cpu's we're already using to control stuff, just fine, in consumer electronics-land
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However there are some minor signs this may be changing. Most of this is rumors but I think the X-box2 and the new gameboy are both going have more then 1 cpu. Plenty of phones already have more then 1 cpu to spread the load of the increasing demands of the software on them. All the chipmakers seem to be working on putting more then one CPU on a single core.
So if phone companies, console makers and chip companies think it is the way of the future why not for consumer appliances?
Think about it, exactly how much cpu power is needed to decode a video stream when a cpu can be dedicated to that task and nothing else? You don't need to go with a SMP like setup. You can simply have one simple processor wich does all the interface stuff. One wich decodes the video. Another perhaps wich decodes the sound. All geared and dedicated to their specific task. Costly? Well to a certain point this is already how PC's work. GPU for visuals. Soundcard for ehm sound.
Of course such a board will be far more expensive to design then a simple board you pick up of the shelf. With consumer electronics like this still extremely unproven the cost may be too high. Until then simply accept the bigger size and other bad points of PC architecture. Have you ever seen the first generation tv's? Video records? Mobile Phones? Etc Etc? They all had one thing in common. THEY WERE HUGE. Hell the first pocket transistor radio's were so big that the sellers had special shirts with enlarged pockets. (got it from an interview with sony people years ago I am sure someone else can better tell this anecdote).
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