From: Bruce D. L. <lig...@li...> - 2007-07-06 23:07:24
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Craig Hughes wrote: > On Jul 6, 2007, at 2:58 PM, Bruce D. Lightner wrote: > > >> 16 Mbyte DRAM chip used by a >> *single copy* of each Perl version is ~8% vs. ~2%! >> > > Gumstix have 64 or 128MB of SDRAM, not 16MB. 1.4MB vms are a > breeze. Welcome to the new world of not-having-to-worry-so-much > embedded. > Dave, You are of course correct! I was thinking about the flash chip, which *is* 16 Mbytes. Nevertheless, the "gumstix" line is at the "who-cares-how-much-the hardware-costs" end in the embedded solutions world, so the "zero sum game" I mentioned in my last email starts with a pretty large "sum"! :-) As for your "welcome", it makes me take pause. Hello "bloat-ware", likely written in Java...and .NET. I can't wait for Eclipse on a "gumstix"! :-) But, seriously, I do find it interesting (and exciting) that solutions like Perl suddenly have entered the embedded design equation, something that was completely out of the realm of possibility just a few short years ago. Where all this will lead makes me worry at bit. Tiny, embedded hardware used to be very simple (and reliable) because it was so resource limited. That is no longer the case...as you no doubt are well aware. Now, most of our new-and-improved "embedded solutions" are so complex and therefore error-prone that they *require* field upgrades. Our early customers get to be our unwilling "beta-testers"...a product engineering technique perfected by "bloat-ware" companies like Microsoft! (I don't think I should have to "upgrade" the firmware in my bedside alarm clock!) Plus, this stuff used to be "hard", which is why only "smart people" attempted it, and therefore the quality of embedded products was generally high. Now, with the needed resources to run embedded Linux, it seems like "everyone and his/her brother/sister" has joined in...again something that *you* must be painfully aware of! It seems to me that embedded Linux is the MS Visual C of the hardware world, Visual C having been designed by MS to bring "Windows programming" to the masses, which (arguably) did not achieve its goal. It will be interesting to look back on all of this in a few years! // Best regards, Bruce** -- Bruce D. Lightner Lightner Engineering La Jolla, California Voice: +1-858-551-4011 FAX: +1-858-551-0777 Email: lig...@li... URL: http://www.lightner.net/lightner/bruce/ |