Linux To Gain Another Chip Family

Posted by timothy on Monday May 17, 2004 @12:58PM from the assimilation-nation dept.

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."

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Re:Great, I can use them by DAldredge · 2004-05-17 13:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

Mission critical systems and first generation chips are not a good match.
PowerPC is as cheap as ColdFire by Wesley+Felter · 2004-05-17 13:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.