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Texas Instruments Embedding Linux

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the right-tool-for-the-job dept.

darthcamaro writes "Looks like pretty soon Linux will truly become ubiquitous thanks to Texas Instruments new DaVinci System on a chip DSP. The new consumer electronics chip aimed at capturing the Digital Video market is powered by MontaVista Linux. 'TI understands that there is a larger number of Linux programmers than there are DSP programmers,' Huy Pham, DSP System-on-Chip product marketing manager at TI, told internetnews.com. 'What [DaVinci] does in partnership with MontaVista is enables the Linux developer to use the DSP without needing to understand the complexity of programming the DSP.'"

3 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. free software is expensive. by nblender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    MontaVista isn't going to get anywhere if they continue to insist on charging $18,000 USD a seat for 'gcc'. An embedded project I'm on comes with a Montavista runtime license. When I asked for the kernel source, the hardware vendor said they were legally bound by MontaVista not to give out the kernel source and to talk to MV. When I asked MV for the source, the salesperson tried to tell me that required a special source license that I had to pay for. I think someone in 'sales' doesn't understand the concept of a license. We've since chosen to just dump MV. I think TI would probably be better off just coming up with their own distro.

  2. Blackfin? by GregAllen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Analog Devices makes a family of DSP called the Blackfin that runs uClinux. We've been using a development board for well over a year. If this is TI's first linux offering, I'd say they're late to the party. Maybe it was hard to port Linux because sizeof(char) was 2. (If you've ever used a 16-bit TI DSP... :)

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  3. Hypocritical by FrankDrebin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's all well and good for TI to benefit from the open source community. But TI still refuses to publish their WiFi information for open source driver developers.

    In 2001, TI (Texas Instruments) decided to make a big push on the 802.11 market. ... From the start, TI has refused to give any help towards a Linux driver and have decided to totally ignore the Linux community.

    Sure it's all great to see some more uptake of Linux, but beware that TI has not shown itself to be a great friend in the past.

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