[En-Nut-Discussion] Supporting Other Target Platforms (Porsche 911 is better than a Golf but sorry , I need a small car)

[Zodianet]

Harald,
I have just no time to debug Nut/OS and even if it is small, it's complex.
It's very easy to spend a lot of time for this task.  
I need a reliable OS like other users I think. 
For my job, I worked on a BSD stack adaptation because the native stack of a
well-known real-time OS was bugged(... and very expensive). Big CPU,
memories, big problems ...
But for my friends, small != TCP/IP. Definitively. Instead BSD & Linux,
nothing....
Of course, a Porsche 911 is better than a Golf but I need a small car.
Smallest as possible.  
With Nut/OS, I do the same things with I=100mA and 32K of RAM with a near
cold board.
I am nicely surprised. So small! Perfect for my needs. 
And it works.(the last TCP updates are very good).  
Really, no hidden critics :-)
But reliability very is important ;-)   

Nut/OS has no MMU. Yes, but MMU is only useful when tasks are bugged.
Waste a little time to create an abstraction layer and then develop , test,
debug your high layer applications on confortable environment e.g. PC,
linux, Windows (equiped with MMU) and without real-time constraints (very
important). Create I/O simulators if needed.  
And when all is OK,compile and test your software on the target.
(in fact, the both compilers windows are always open here and point to the
same sources) 
And...  maintain dual environment for portability and bug tracking.
In fact, you will save a lot of time. No MMU is no problem. 
Except for 10 exp(6) lines of code, system, low layers or I/O oriented
applications.    
Jean Pierre



-----Message d'origine-----
De : en-nut-discussion-bounces at egnite.de
[mailto:en-nut-discussion-bounces at egnite.de] De la part de Harald Kipp
Envoyé : lundi 9 février 2004 20:58
À : Ethernut User Chat (English)
Objet : RE: [En-Nut-Discussion] Supporting Other Target Platforms

Hi Jean Pierre,

At 12:42 05.02.2004 +0100, you wrote:
>I am not sure that Nut/OS needs a great "CPU upsizing" today but it 
>needs to become first more reliable before migrate!

Do I detect hidden critics here? :-)

Nut/OS will never be as reliable as larger systems, which offer MMU and
protected memory regions.
The cooperative threading adds additional traps.
That's why it's more difficult to write reliable applications for Nut/OS
compared to Linux.

>Other bigger OS are in place and could be a better choice for bigger 
>CPUs to fill quickly 512K of Flash ;-).
>

For example, if you want to create an MP3 Ethernet player, you can use
hardware. If you want to add Ogg Vorbis, you are lost (no idea, wether there
are any hardware de/encoders available in the meantime, just to give an
example).

So you need raw power, but no eCos, Linux or whatever.
Just something simple with a little bit TCP would do.
That's at least my motivation. I'd like to see my GameBoy playing MPEG
movies, which I transfered on it's CompactFlash card via FTP.

Harald

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