? about kernel size..

[Brad Walker]

By God John, you have pretty much summed up the current state of my
engineering life!

I encountered these problems when I worked at a company called Xetawave.
They install these RF modems all over the place. A big market is the
oil/gas industry. If something breaks, they have to send out a technician
and that costs $100s of dollars. Managers start to get really anxious when
that happens.

My current embedded client is about the same thing. Once the device is
installed getting it fixed/changed can be a real hassle. Don't even get me
started on the TCP/IP or memory issues dealing with uTasker. I can't
believe companies actually fall for this stuff, but they do. They make real
products out of them. But, it can be such a hassle.

-brad w.



On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 6:42 PM, John Clark <jeclark2006 at aim.com> wrote:

>
> On Mar 8, 2016, at 5:20 PM, Brad Walker <bwalker at musings.com> wrote:
>
> For example, we have a requirement to implement SSL/TLS, BTLE, and ftp on a
> microkernel. By the time this is done, it will be worthwhile to look at
> alternatives. Not to mention, the needs just keep coming.
>
> -brad w.
>
>
> At which point I become very vociferous in arguing against using a process
> so limited that it can’t run a BSD/Linux derivative.
>
> This sort of happened with the recent brush with the 8051… The Boss wanted
> to have the 8051 do some TCP/IP with some sort of
> Ethernet interface that was available from the company that made the 8051…
>
> At which point I found a $15 AP based on MIPS/Atheros SoC, and provided
> not only TCP/IP but also a local hotspot for control/monitoring, ethernet
> hub, mini http server, etc.
>
> If someone wanted to reduce cost from $15 they could have gotten the Eval
> package and gotten the design to a manufacturing house for much less as
> well…
> Of course they would talking about volumes many times greater than 100s…
>
> The 8051 controller was still in there, but the ‘fancy’ stuff was on a
> board that could handle ‘fancy’ stuff without making the project 2-3 years
> worth of development on a minimal
> processor platform.
>
> Another aspect of the ‘minimal system’ that is required to do ‘fancy’
> stuff, is that often the TCP/IP implementation is sort of ‘half-baked’ and
> can introduce problems which go
> far beyond just not accessing the device… it could cause problems for the
> entire network, and require much debugging to solve… or even understand
> what’s going on…
>
> This may be ok if the devices are located in conveniently accessible
> locations… but if one has to go to a remote location via helicopter or pack
> in equipment with mules…
> such issues become bigger than the cost savings of some minimal solution.
>
> John Clark.
>
>