From: "Michael D. Crawford" <crawford@goingware.com>
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Conserving memory for an embedded application
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 00:53:16 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <3D91413C.1050603@goingware.com> (raw)
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.
One question I have is whether it is possible to burn an uncompressed image of
the kernel into flash, and then boot the kernel in-place, so that it is not
copied to RAM when it runs. Of course the kernel would need RAM for its data
structures and user programs, but it would seem to me I should be able to run
the kernel without making a RAM copy.
It would be OK if I had to mess with the bootloader to do this.
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. Some
amount of RAM would be saved if the executing code were run from the flash ROM
rather than being copied into RAM as would normally be the case when executing a
demand-paged executable.
This last is probably not as important as running the kernel out of flash as I
don't think the user program would be very large.
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?
Thank you,
Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/
crawford@goingware.com
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
next reply other threads:[~2002-09-24 20:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2002-09-25 4:53 Michael D. Crawford [this message]
2002-09-24 21:59 ` Conserving memory for an embedded application Brad Hards
2002-09-25 0:52 ` Ralf Baechle
2002-09-25 5:18 ` Robert Schwebel
2002-09-25 6:25 Greg Ungerer
2002-09-30 0:38 ` Pavel Machek
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