PC/104

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 06:10:04PM +0200, Christopher Friedt wrote:
> Sorry to disagree, but having worked w/ the MPP board, as well as some 
> pretty powerful embedded devices, I would never trade that experience 
> for anything else. I learned more with that device about general 
> instrumentation than I would have if we'd have used a more advanced 
> device, which was exactly the purpose. The 500 sold is also in a very 
> small market - probably 4 college / university courses with only a 
> handful of people in them every year, for  a few years is pretty good 
> for not having any marketing campaigns.

Great experience certainly, but I still don't consider it a powerful
processor relative to what is current.  Something like an IXP or PXA or
other arm design is much much more powerful, and might even use less
power.

> The 68HC12 paired with a 56k DSP (a la coldfire) is still a fairly 
> powerful piece of equipment - powerful enough to do frame routing for 
> HDTV signals at high speeds, and also probably _quite_ less expensive 
> for dev / production / manufacturing costs. Moreover, the 6812 is only 4 
> times faster than the 6811.

Isn't a coldfire practically a 68k?  Seems rather more powerful than the
68hc12 it is paired with. :)

embedded mips and arm systems are pretty cheap too, and many of the
powerpc chips are pretty cheap too.

> It's all dependent on what's required for the project of course... if 
> you need a TCP IP stack, WLAN, or USB host capabilities, then go with 
> something a bit more sophisticated.
> 
> Power is in the eye of the beholder... if I can twist such a saying to 
> illustrate my point here.

You can do a lot with an 8 bit micro, but you can do a lot more
(although probably with more development work too) with a modern 32bit
embedded processor.

--
Len Sorensen
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