Thank you so much for the in-depth, thorough answer here Fransisco. I
think I'm definitely revisiting my thinking and heading towards an SoC
option, but am still planning on using RIOT-OS if it all possible.
Thanks again for sharing your war stories!
On 8/12/15 6:05 AM, Francisco Javier Acosta Padilla wrote:
Hi all,
I experienced a similar problem as Zac's, so I will try to answer the
questions from my own experience.
I had an application that could be very easily wrote using Java,
however, as you already noticed, for this *small* devices a complete JVM
is not a realistic option. But why?
First of all, because this *small* devices are very constrained in
memory, but offer something that is very valuable in the IoT: they can
run with batteries for a considerable amount of time.
This said, I will try to answer the question: Why it's not possible to
add lots of external memory? Well, because for instance DDRX RAM is VERY
energy consuming. Just to have an idea, make a comparison between the
typical energy consumption of a Raspberry Pi with only 512MB of RAM and
any Cortex MCU.
During my research, I was looking for the biggest MCU with lots of RAM
and ROM to be as less constrained as possible for my developments. I
found a Renesas MCU with 384KB of RAM, which seemed the biggest at that
time (2013), but also very energy consuming, that would not last more
than a day with added radio communication capabilities.
However, I found a ST Cortex-M4F with 256KB of RAM and 2MB of ROM, with
a reasonable energy consumption. This MCU has a SRAM 32-bit controller
that is able to manage external SRAM. With this you could say "oh great!
I will add lots of RAM and run my JVM"! but again, take a look to the
energy consumption of any external SRAM chip. A similar situation comes
with the use of any external ROM chip, like a SD card or similar, the
energy needed to use it is huge.
The conclusion is, if you want to run a complete JVM (i.e. openJDK) you
will need lots of ROM/RAM, which is not available in MCUs (I didn't find
any commercially available MCU with such amount of memory), but you
still have the SoC option, like a Raspberry Pi or similar.
As of my knowledge, RIOT itself will not limit you in any way to
implement a JVM, but if you're using a RPi you would prefer linux as OS.
So, if the energy consumption is not an issue for you, I would recommend
to use any SoC based device commercially available, if you don't want to
use a PC. Otherwise, the only option you have is the very limited JVM
that were developed for research purposes, such as Darjeeling, Maté or
any improved version of them. But still, take into account that running
a JVM will need energy, that is consumed constantly even if your
applications are doing nothing, compared to a native application that
consumes only when running.
I hope this answer some of your questions.
Best,
Francisco
On Tue, 2015-08-11 at 22:38 -0400, Zac Harvey wrote:
Thanks Marc, I appreciate the candid input. I have a few final (I
promise) followups here that are more for my edification/learning than
anything else.
You say that RIOT is meant for *small* systems, and I think I'm
beginning to understand what that means. But regardless of what RIOT is
*typically* used for, are there any inherent limitations in RIOT that
would prevent me from deploying/flashing it to a sophisticated MCU that
*could* run Java? In other words, say I have an MCU that has a crazy
amount of ROM/RAM on it that has the stats to handle a full bore JVM
app...does RIOT itself have any limitation/constraints that would
prevent me from choosing it (nevermind *why* I would choose it in the
first place!)?
Also, I get that MCU ROM is the memory where the executable is flashed
to. And I understand that because of this, in order for a non-running
executable to "fit" on an MCU, it must have a file size that is smaller
than the amount of ROM (obviously). But I'm still not understanding why
the RAM (that is, the memory allocated to the running executable) can't
be scalable by somehow attaching additional storage (flash/whatever) to
the MCU. In other words, if the sam3x8e has 512KB ROM and only 96KB RAM,
if my entire JVM executable (which includes *everything*) is somehow
magically less than 512KB, it will fit on the MCU. So why can't I then
"get around" the 96KB RAM limitation by (somehow) integrating that
onboard 96KB RAM with, say, an 8GB solid state drive, or something
thereabouts. I just feel like there *must* be a way to scale the RAM
and perhaps even the ROM. Ideas?
Thanks again, if I can get answers to these I should be all set!
Best,
Zac
On 8/11/15 5:19 PM, Marc Sissom wrote:
Hi Zac,
Have you looked at the sam3x8e datasheet? Right on the front page it says it
has 512KB of flash (AKA ROM or nonvolatile program and data storage). The chip
has 96KB of RAM. Looking into task manager on Windows 7 I see a javaw.exe that
is occupying 133MB of RAM and my JRE takes up 153MB of disk. Admittedly this is
not a perfect comparison, but surely these numbers mean something to you.
RIOT is meant for *small* systems. Not SMALL or S M A L L but small systems. Some of these systems
are so small that they can't do "Hello World" because the "printf" code takes
up too much space.
Thoughts? Criticisms? Hate mail?
In other words, you're nuts!
;-)
Given that, here's a true Java bytecode chip that I worked with a few years
back:
http://www.ajile.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2&Itemid=6
Here's an FPGA core:
http://www.jopdesign.com/
And an ARM product:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle
In other words, you are not the first to think of this, and in some cases it's
not a bad idea. On the other hand, I think you can safely forget Akka on RIOT.
You also mentioned Python; have a look here:
http://micropython.org/
Enjoy!
Marc Sissom
Krypton Solutions
-----Original Message-----
From: devel [mailto:devel-boun...@riot-os.org] On Behalf Of Zac Harvey
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 3:23 PM
To: RIOT OS kernel developers
Subject: Re: [riot-devel] HotSpot JVM on RIOT-OS?
Thanks Kaspar and Joakim,
I'm not trying to be difficult here (I promise!) I'm just trying to see the
forest through the trees.
When you say that "The OpenJDK would probably require many megabytes of both ROM and RAM, this
means it will not run on the sam3x8e...", why? Is it because it would require "many
megabytes", or because it requires ROM, which I'm guessing isn't supported by RIOT-OS?
And yes, I will definitely dive into Darjeeling/LLVM, but am trying to see if I
can't brute force an easier solution first. :-)
Thanks again!
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