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Linux To Gain Another Chip Family

Posted by timothy on 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."

6 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Great, I can use them by Orion+Blastar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I want to build a low cost Computer Automated Dispatch system with just the basics for low income firehouses, police stations, and hospitals. This chip might just fit the bill. I was going to go with Transmeta or a low end X86 processor.

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  2. FYI Freescale is the old Motorola SPS group by cacheMan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This isn't some fly-by-night chip maker.

  3. Huge Difference by bsd4me · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is a really big difference between embedded processors and mainstream CPUs.

    The biggest is that power consumption is really important in the embedded world. Sometimes you can only get so much current to a board, or you can't run fans.

    Typically, embedded processors can run without support chips. Many have built in memory controllers and I/O.

    Another thing is the MMU. A lot of embedded processors have MMUs (I think most of the PPC ones do), but OS support for them is a bit lacking (or it was until recently). But at times, the MMU can get in the way

    IMHO, I would never run linux in an embedded product, other than simple internet appliances or where realtime isn't required. Commerical RTOSs like VxWorks really are worth it for most embedded applications.

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  4. ColdFire is 680x0, nearly by r00t · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ColdFire was created like this:

    1. start with 680x0
    2. rip out the bloat (MMU, fancy FPU, etc.)
    3. redo the opcode-to-binary mapping

    Often you can use 680x0 assembly code on
    a ColdFire chip, though you'll need to run
    it through a ColdFire assembler. You can't
    just grab a binary.

  5. Another chip *family*? No. by DdJ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Another chip family? No, unless you think Intel XScale and TI OMAP are in different chip families. The ColdFire chips are just another example of the m68k family, like the DragonBall chips are.

  6. What's so "u" about uCLinux? by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Interesting

    uCLinux is a port of Linux to CPUs without an MMU. Without an MMU, the chips don't support the convincingly simulated parallelism of fork(), rather just the nominally similar (blocking) vfork(). What other compromises must an application concede when running under uCLinux, rather than a "full" Linux kernel?

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