From: Robert Schwebel <robert@schwebel.de>
To: "Michael D. Crawford" <crawford@goingware.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Conserving memory for an embedded application
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 07:18:01 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20020925051801.GQ10741@pengutronix.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3D91413C.1050603@goingware.com>
On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 12:53:16AM -0400, Michael D. Crawford wrote:
> I am helping my client design an embedded hardware device that we may
> run Linux on. An important concern is to minimize the amount of ROM
> and flash ram that the device has, both to save manufacturing cost and
> to minimize power consumption.
IMHO this isn't worth the efford. Flash is slow and (per kbyte) more
expensive than RAM, so I would'n waste too much time on this if you
don't plan to make more than >10000 pieces of your device. If you care
for power consumption use another architecture than x86.
> It would also be helpful if a filesystem image containing a user program
> could be burned into flash, and then the program run directly out of flash.
Use jffs2 for the root file system.
> Also, what is the minimum amount of physical ram that you think I can
> get any version of the kernel later than 2.0 or so to run in? I heard
> somewhere that someone can boot an x86 system with as little as 2MB of
> RAM. Is that the case?
This depends on which drivers you need, how much stuff you need in
userspace and how memory hungry your application is. Running a 2.4
kernel with busybox/uclibc in 2 MB RAM is possible.
Robert
--
Dipl.-Ing. Robert Schwebel | http://www.pengutronix.de
Pengutronix - Linux Solutions for Science and Industry
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2002-09-25 5:13 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2002-09-25 4:53 Michael D. Crawford
2002-09-24 21:59 ` Brad Hards
2002-09-25 0:52 ` Ralf Baechle
2002-09-25 5:18 ` Robert Schwebel [this message]
2002-09-25 6:25 Greg Ungerer
2002-09-30 0:38 ` Pavel Machek
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