Bill Gatliff wrote: > Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> ARM on the other hand who knows. I suspect it still stick > >> around in small embedded sytems along with MIPS and PPC. > > Rmk says he's got an SMP ARM machine, so maybe they're headed upwards > too. > > OT: I'd love to see MIPS stick around, tho. Not saying it isn't, but... ARM is the most successful semiconductor company on the planet and one of the most profitable. ARM LTD. focus on fabless designs and licenses there processors to any company for building micorProcessors on including on substrate (such as ASICs or FPGA....). ARM has whipped the snot out of the worlds leading 8/16 uP company, Microchip destroying the margins in 8/16 bit processors Any start can get very inexpensive ARM technology and have their own processor. That's why Motorola (now freescale has dumped the 8/16 bit market and even now licenses processors from ARM. Likewise TI licenses technology (ARM CORES) from ARM LTD. ARM is steadily building up cores for larger and larger needs. ARM will survive and prosper, because they have the ultimate business strategy. Employ the best, Like Russell King, the father of Linux on ARM...... The technical folks at ARM are elite. Truly a buch of 'ass_whipping dudes'....... The accountants take the names. MIPS has been floundering for quite some time. MIPS is technology that is 99% in the Public domain. This means no major company is going to invest in a architecture that is not patentable. Back in the Day when MIPS was married to Silicon Graphics, they use to sue the same tactics as the holders of the SVR4 linux licenses, Sue and intimidate. When SGI fell, MIPS was relegated to the laboratories and impoverished startups with core experince in MIPS. You can build you own MIPS CPU: http://www.opencores.com/projects.cgi/web/mips/overview As has been stated PPC has a very bright future. Freescale has deep business relationships with the other Motorola sister companies. Motorola split up not because it wasn't profitable, but because it allows the enormously wealthy family behind motorola to 'renig' on it's finacial retirement oblgations to it's employees. PPC is the favorite processor, by far, of the US DOD. Lots of brain_dead US DOD engineers will use nothing else. PPC has many nitches that other processors cannot fill, and in many circumstances tight integration with the Freescale DSPs keep them in contracts for a long time into the future. If you look at the PPC offerings they are continually adding new, high end processors, porting commercial linux and 'wheelin&Dealin' in the financial markets with new, patented technology centric to the PPC. The Mac computers, are dying off, with the rise of linux. Most of the MAC technical users I know at least dual boot into linux. Gates acquired MACs so that there would be a third (pathetic) competitor to Winbloz. Linux is whipping the snot out of MS in the server markets. Windows does not even get mentioned in super_computing. And IBM runs linux on their mainframe farms fot the DOD now.... Bill Gate is moving to philanthropy because he can privately tie deals for philanthropic funds to dirty deals with winbloz in foreign markets. He no saint, he's a scum_bag. His pal Warren Buffet has just about purchased all of the 'dark fiber' in the US, at pennies on the dollar. The prices dropping out of the bottom on x86 architectures is why Intel is leaving x86. They cannot compete anymore in the x86 arena. That does not mean that x86 is dying, many other companies have x86 based technology and cores that can be put on substrate (FPGAs, asics, ....). The real market for embedded is 8 and 16 bit processors that are in wrist watches, alternators, temperature sensors, etc etc. there about a 1000 to 1 ratio of 16 bit and below processors to the large well-known processors deployed world. This ratio is increasing, in the favor of the smaller uP every day. (note 32 bit processors will be consider small, in a year or so). Many uP have less that 2K(bytes) of code space. Those chips with state machines architectures do not have room for a RTOS, let alone embedded linux. Don't get me wrong, I love embedded linux, but readers of this list would benefit themselves by going to web sites such as www.opencores.org and learning about hardware, how it is put together, and the resulting data sheets and example code that the semiconductor companies publish. You could learn how FAT file system work on various solid-state chips which make up the various offerings from vendors. Spending some time doing this would allow one to develop expertise so you can separate hype from bullshit. --in case anyone cares, James -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
