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Samsung's Linux-based Diskless Camcorder

Posted by michael on from the jack-of-all-trades dept.

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has a story about the Samsung Miniket, a digital camcorder the size of a pack of cards that also works as a portable MP3 player, webcam, voice recorder, storage device, and more. The Miniket (annoying Flash and sound) will be available in February or March in the US, for $600-$700, with a rugged 'sports' model to follow. The device runs Linux, boots in under a second, and is the first of several products from Samsung that will run a new variation of Linux called 'ARM-no-MMU.' LinuxDevices also has a whitepaper about Samsung research that shows the new Linux variant to be faster than normal Linux."

6 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. For those not in the know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    MMU stands for memory management unit. It is a component used to protect parts of memory from being accidently overwritten, for example.

  2. Re:Request for clarification on Diskless technolog by greechneb · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Miniket boots from 128KB of NOR Flash, and includes 16MB of SDRAM. As noted above, various models offer different amounts of user file storage, which is based on a single internal NAND Flash chip. The 128KB NOR Flash is only used for bootloader functions; all other system software, including the kernel, is stored within the much larger NAND Flash.

    I think diskless means no CD/DVD/floppy

  3. Re:ARM-no-MMU the same as uClinux? by soramimicake · · Score: 4, Informative

    The 'white paper written by Samsung' mentioned in the submission is titled 'Context Switching and IPC Performance Comparison between uClinux and Linux on the ARM9 based Processor'. So it is indeed uClinux.

  4. Re:Request for clarification on Diskless technolog by updog · · Score: 3, Informative

    There's thousands of products which are "diskless devices" that don't require a server!! This is simply an embedded device - everything it needs is on flash memory.

  5. Not necessarily by pslam · · Score: 3, Informative
    Since it has no MMU. Without the overhead of actually having to manage the memory, it's got to be faster.

    This is not necessarily true. The difference in speed you'll get with a properly arranged MMU will be negligable. I hate SoC manufacturers who fall for this line of thinking and miss out the MMU "because it's not needed". It just makes development and debugging 10 times harder for a mostly negligable speed and power consumption gain.

    Any SoC designers out there: please stop producing high spec CPUs without MMUs! You aren't doing anyone a favour.

  6. Re:Pathetic by exhilaration · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Canon S1 IS has 10X optical zoom, image stabilization, 30fps 640x480 movies, 3.2 MP still shots, and uses CF cards - all for around $300. Check out this review.