Embedded Systems, Linux, and the Future (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

Here's an O'ReillyNet article looking at the future of embedded Linux systems. "Before anything useful is said about this market, one has to keep in mind that for a long time, 50 percent of embedded systems were running custom-made, in-house operating systems. That's an important figure, as many of the engineers deploying a "roll your own" OS are increasingly attracted to Linux. So beyond grabbing market share from established embedded OS vendors, Linux is also penetrating the "last frontier" of the embedded OS world."

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Embedded Systems, Linux, and the Future (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jun 10, 2003 19:39 UTC (Tue) by trode (guest, #11680) [Link]

old news. yawn.

Embedded Systems, Linux, and the Future (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jun 10, 2003 21:18 UTC (Tue) by pjs (guest, #10927) [Link]

The articles about the "embedded systems market" and Linux always seem to apply terms like "embedded market" to only systems using the 32 bit chips capable of running Linux, VxWorks, ATI Nucleus, Qnx, and so on.

The truth is that the vast majority of embedded processors are 8 bit chips, such as the Motorola HC08 and HC11, Microchip PIC, Atmel AVR, Texas Instruments MSP430, and the old Intel 8051 (perhaps the most widespread and currently manufactured by dozens of companies). Code sizes range from 32k down to only 1k, and RAM varies from 2k down to only 64 or less bytes in many chips.

These tiny chips are almost always programmed with a custom "operating system". Often they are programmed in assembly language to allow a smaller, less expensive chip to be used. Even an entire extra person-year of coding time (for 4k or 8k of opcodes) pays off if the resulting code/ram size allows decreasing the chip's cost by $1 or even a fraction of a dollar. The high volume applications that use this chips are absolutely huge.

My point is to put quotes like "50 percent of embedded systems were running custom-made, in-house operating systems" into some perspective. Sure, perhaps 50% of 32 bit platforms capable of running Linux. But those 32 bit systems are a small portion of the entire embedded processor market which is dominated by 8 bit platforms that have no chance of running Linux and are so cost sensitive in volume production that is pays to write extreemly compact and efficient code, even if that means months packing code into only a few thousand assembly language instructions!

Embedded Systems, Linux, and the Future (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Jun 11, 2003 7:13 UTC (Wed) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link]

Maybe you don't get it but I do. Your talking about volume of chips and he's talking about numbers of projects.

Where I work we are replacing "roll your own" OS systems developed by outside vendors with our own internally deployed embedded Linux. Linux lowers the software barrier that prohibited us from supporting our own "roll your own" OS in the past. We will not show up on the radar of the any established press covering the traditional embedded systems field; only on the bottom line of the traditional embedded OS vendors.