On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Helge Hafting wrote:
> Marco Colombo wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 21 Mar 2000, Helge Hafting wrote:
>
> > > Having enough RAM is fine for a pc. An embedded device running linux
> > > will likely
> > > be mass-produced with the minimum amount of RAM though.
> >
> > And no MMU and no swap space. They will never go OOS. No paging.
> > No processes killer. And why processes? Why a scheduler?
> >
> > Besides that, why any embedded device should be optimized for high
> > multitasking - multiuser - general purpose workloads? That's what
> > "overcommitting" is for. That's what (vanilla) Linux is designed for.
> > Many parts of it are not well suited for embedded systems. They are not
> > designed for them.
>
> Don't underestimate embedded devices, some of them have uses for mmu,
> paging, and multiple processes.
>
> A printer controller may use a disk drive for storing large print
> jobs as well as repeat jobs such as standard forms and custom
> fonts. I have seen office machines that combine telefax, scanner,
> printer, copying and modem in one box. (Great idea, every part
> has several uses) This is complex and can use a multiprocess
> environment - you don't want fax reception or a dialup line
> to stop just because some clerk copies a few letters for the
> snail-mail archive.
>
> A dedicated gaming machine will want to support today's
> multithreaded games, and it need the ability
> to run all kinds of games, not merely a particular one.
> Both this and the advanced printer can use networking.
> With networking and storage devices
> you want the MMU to protect the os from app bugs.
>
> And then there are various kinds of devices that used to be simple but
> now they want to have a web interface. Linux + an open source webserver
> is a cheap way to get that, and you probably want the core functionality
> protected from the web stuff.
Agreed. They want a cheap solution and kernel developers should fill
the source with conditional code to allow them *disable* most of the
useful features of Linux, because they don't suit well their very
particular need?
They need a specialized OS and probably a specialized web server.
They're free to steel as much code as they like from the linux source tree,
and adapt it. But they should not say "Linux is no good because it
overcommits memory, and it kills our buggy applications".
>
> Helge Hafting
>
> -
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>
.TM.
--
____/ ____/ /
/ / / Marco Colombo
___/ ___ / / Technical Manager
/ / / ESI s.r.l.
_____/ _____/ _/ Colombo@ESI.it
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