On 04/25/2012 06:59 AM, Robert Schwebel wrote:
However, this is all not true if you care about industrial projects and
their quality requirements; you need chips with long term availability
there, with reliable operation at the specified frequency for> 10 years
and without problematic manufacturing processes like required by POP.
But in general yes - the number of applications which really require a
uCLinux device is going down.
To expand on this point - I'd disagree somewhat, and say it may be going up.
(in the fairly short-term future).
It is possible - with a lot of investment - and a hell of a lot of units
ordered, to get a Pi class system to come in at $25.
(Though I note that in reality, this is more like $40 for the Pi)
The Pi is quite unsuited to many tasks, for the reasons mentioned above.
It's probably possible to integrate a 'SoC' based linux-capable design,
which requires off-board RAM and ROM, for $10ish in high volumes.
This means that 'linux' costs you $20 (counting margin) on the price of
the product.
If and when in the next several years this gets shrunk onto one chip, it
will start out at the range of $5 in volume, and keep dropping until
it's well under $.5.
At that point, you can consider what a 'proper' linux system, where you
don't have to worry about coding your TCP/IP stack, or writing USB
drivers, or ... does to the design time of many simple devices, from
face-recognising doorlocks to networked light-switches, to connected
mousetraps.
For devices where you actually have to solder the RAM on - it's becoming
hard to actually source RAM devices small enough to make uclinux relevant.
The cheapest DRAM chip on digikey is a DDR device at 32 megabytes for $6.
(digikey is a horrible place to buy RAM)
(Apologies for the accidental mail missing off the list)
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