The Cost of Embedded Production [LWN.net]

The Cost of Embedded Production

Posted Dec 4, 2005 9:59 UTC (Sun) by larryr (guest, #4030)
In reply to: The Cost of Embedded Production by smoogen
Parent article: LinkSys courts Linux hackers with WRT54GL (LinuxDevices)

While Linux has a zero/unit licensing cost, its development, qa and maintenance costs are higher than the fixed VxWorks costs which basically bundles all that together in their finished licensed product.

Case studies or other data? In using VxWorks and Linux for product development I have not found anything VxWorks "bundles all that together" any more than Linux... I have not seen any technical or cost advantage of VxWorks over Linux.

If anything.. this should help spur Linux hackers more. You need to figure out a way to use a smaller cpu, memory footprint than the current VxWorks and offer more features (or better reliability with the features that exist).

Linux is already competetive with VxWorks (or significantly better) in those ways. Nevertheless I do not think a sufficient effort will be made by [the open source community] to develop a solution which provides the capabilities in 2MB flash and 8MB RAM that have been provided in 4MB flash and 16MB RAM, because there is simply not enough of a value proposition. If it was something like a difference between 50USD retail and 150USD retail, then I think it might be considered worth the effort to get Linux to run adequately on the 50USD box, but for something like 50USD vs 75USD, I would not expect there to be sufficient motivation to get it to run as well on the 50USD box when it already runs fine on the 75USD box.

Larry

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Posted Dec 5, 2005 21:26 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link] (1 responses)

we've got nothing in common; no common ground to start from..

Oh, wait. Wrong thread.

... that you've worked with VxWorks, and blah blah...

But, have you just programmed with it?

Or have you negotiated the multi-hundred-thousand unit sales contracts, which may include bundled programmer support which a vendor shipping Linux would likely have to either expense internally or pay someone outside for?

You can't bundle support into free.

You say

Posted Dec 9, 2005 2:36 UTC (Fri) by jhwang107 (guest, #34421) [Link]

Right, there are some hidden costs when using Linux, but the same goes to VxWorks based system(s).

You still have to spend time to port the BSP codes, and you still have to spend time test the protocols, fine tune. Overhead for running automated tests on VxWorks is too much for a small system, but may be ok for larger systems. But then again, on large systems, memory isnt a issue, so use Linux not VxWorks.

Linux is just easier to work with compare to VxWorks.
Yeah, in general VxWorks takes less foot print. But I have to mention it is really annoying to have to reinitialize the VxWorks based systems we have *every time* we make a minor configuration change. For what it is worth, choose Nucleus over VxWorks in a peer to peer comparism.

Their licensing cost isnt cheap either. Might as well take the money and increase your memory size.