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Linux To Gain Another Chip Family
An anonymous reader submits "Freescale will unveil the first ColdFire processors ever to include a memory management unit (MMU), and therefore able to run full-scale Linux, this week at the Embedded Processor Forum in San Jose, Calif. The chips cost $17 - $25, and are used mostly in industrial control and factory automation. Simultaneously, Freescale tools subsidiary Metrowerks announced plans to offer Linux development tools for Coldfire chips, which previously had been restricted to running uClinux due to the lack of an MMU."
> Hopefully with these new ones, the more modern AmigaOS4
:(
> can be ported to them
You can't "port" something that hasn't been written yet!
6 years now and all promises
Mission critical systems and first generation chips are not a good match.
First, let's compare apples to apples. These new ColdFire processors run at 266 MHz and cost $20-27. The 266MHz PowerPC MPC5200 (also from Motorola) costs $27.
Even the desktop-class PPC 750s and 74xxs aren't expensive if you buy them in volume. The AmigaOne is expensive because it is a niche-of-a-niche product, not because Moto is ripping people off.
Well how about open motherboard designs? Is anyone working on this sort of thing? I know about the Open Core projects, but it's be neat to make a little computer from scratch.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Innovation like this underscores the need for relying on free software (or, put differently, the problem with relying or recommending non-free software). It's an easy trap to get into when you use an i386 GNU/Linux distribution (as most GNU/Linux users do, I suspect) because there are so many opportunities to get hardware that only fully work with non-free software (like nVidia video cards that require non-free kernel driver software to operate fully). When you become dependent on non-free software you lose portability which prevents easily moving to interesting hardware like this one. Non-free video and audio codecs are similar; if you base your work on some Microsoft library for decoding audio or video you won't easily be able to read those files on a non-i386 platform.
Software proprietors won't supply the wide range of support the free software community does. Software proprietors won't give you the power to provide your own support or buy it from programmers and sysadmins in the free marketplace.
Digital Citizen
I would also be hesitant to deploy an RTOS without a proven track record and without good support. I have found kernel bugs before, and I have had to fly out tech support to help out with problems at customer sites. Most commercial vendors will also support old versions for a long time if needed.
Well, ignoring that your login tells it all, I find it funny that you would knock Linux for support. You know that Linux (and to a large degree all OSS including BSD) has won the major awards for support for about the last 5 years. The OSS world tends to offer the best all around support.
In addition, the Linux/OSS world gives you the source code, so that you can figure out what is wrong and even do patches yourself. I figure that if you are really doing embedded, then you certainly have a clue about the kernel and how it operates.
As to flying otu tech support, well, all major companies do that, for a fee. So do you. I am quite sure that your company makes a profit IN SPITE (or perhaps, because) of having to deal with uncaught bugs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You know that Linux (and to a large degree all OSS including BSD) has won the major awards for support for about the last 5 years.
Huh? What does that mean? Whose awards? And who won it - Linux itself??? I've never heard of anything like that.
Google for "linux support awards" virtually draws a blank - only Novell who say they've got 'award winning support' but not specifically their Linux support.
How small does your embedded device have to be?
You can get mini-itx systems including a via processor and motherboard for approximately A$210 (with the current exchange rate about US$150) with negligable shipping.
They are not true embedded boards, and Via doesn't seem to have a handy total power draw figure on their website, but for many situations they might work just as well.
That was my original idea to use a low end X86 processor. Embedded Linux already exists for it, and if SCO gets their way we can always change to BSD Unix.
;)
Anyway an original socket 7 X86 chip should work fine for low end 911 Computer Automated Dispatch. That is if they still sell them.
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