Resolved: firmware is not software [LWN.net]

Resolved: firmware is not software

Posted Aug 24, 2006 16:08 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
In reply to: Resolved: firmware is not software by drag
Parent article: Resolved: firmware is not software

If the manufacturer is just to cheap to invest in a little peice of ROM for their devices then what else did they go cheap on?

Are you kidding me? You want pre-ship bugs locked into the device's ROM for all time? You don't want to be able to add features years later, re-target the device at runtime, or be able to experiment with it yourself (assuming you have appropriate decompilers/toolchain)?

Personally, I'm ecstatic that "firm" no longer describes a lot of device-specific code being written today.

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Resolved: firmware is not software

Posted Aug 24, 2006 19:21 UTC (Thu) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224) [Link]

And the flash to support that is probably more expensive than the ROM would be.

Resolved: firmware is not software

Posted Aug 26, 2006 11:10 UTC (Sat) by broonie (subscriber, #7078) [Link]

Not always - due to the need to program the device at some point during production it can be much more cost effective to put a flash device on and program it after the hardware has been assembled. It allows the use of an off the shelf component, which is normally a win, and can be useful to allow production test access to the system.

Resolved: firmware is not software

Posted Aug 29, 2006 0:38 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

if you look at volume pricing of parts flash is still frequently more expensive then ROM (One-Time-Programmable) versions, let alone ones that don't have the flash at all.

also programming the flash frequently requires additional wires and other components in the device, which also cose.

Resolved: firmware is not software

Posted Aug 29, 2006 18:05 UTC (Tue) by broonie (subscriber, #7078) [Link]

Yes, it does depend on what you're doing - volumes, feature sets and whatnot. Point is that you can't tell which of flash or ROM will work out better until you look at the particular application.