So, I suppose it all depends on what you're looking to do. In small
quantities, a minimum parts BOM that will run a standard build of Pike
will probably be $20. The lesser ARM components that have the horsepower
to run Pike but are incapable of running a full OS would probably run
about half that.
The really affordable MCUs, such as AVRs and PICs, are probably just
too slow to be useful.
In the case of micropython, I suspect that the micropython interpreter is
the firmware flashed to the MCU and that they're using some sort of flash
card to store the libraries and script to run, which sort of defeats my
vision of a simple (from part/circuit complexity) solution. I'm not sure
that there's much way around that, though, because the master alone is
bigger than the total flash available for a lot of MCUs.
Still, I think it's an interesting idea. Maybe a very early version of
ulpc might be a good starting point...
On Wed, 7 May 2014, Stephen R. van den Berg wrote:
Bill Welliver wrote:
C but without memory management and with better types. But really,
most true MCUs are so space constrained that I'm not sure it's worth
the effort (which I suppose perhaps depends on the goal).
I have to admit though, that the most cost-effective embedded systems have
something the size of 8 to 128KB of flash, and 4 to 32KB of RAM, which in
reality is too small to run Pike (I'm guessing though). So maybe you're
right, and the highest volume target market is out of reach. Then again,
MCU capacities are slowly rising and costs are coming down, so there is
going to be a point in time where it will make sense.
--
Stephen.
