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Hardware

Single-Chip Linux Computer 225

Posted by michael from the but-does-it-run...-yes-it-does dept.
goombah99 writes "Axis Computer has announced a single-chip Linux-based computer that integrates 2MB Flash, 8MB SDRAM and an Ethernet transceiver into a single chip with a 27mm x 27mm footprint. 'Just add power to the chip and you have a Linux computer with network connection.' It runs the Linux 2.4 kernel without any patches. The announcement says the chip is 'available' but the tech specs are labeled as preliminary, and the order form on the web site is broken, so it's hard to confirm if it is out yet or not. Some specifications in html and pdf are available at the company's web site."
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Single-Chip Linux Computer

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  • 2mb? (Score:3, Funny)

    by NWT ( 540003 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:01AM (#4966097) Homepage
    Common, even my 4/86 had more memory!? And how do they expect me to compile gnome2 on this? *duh*

  • You know... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by craenor ( 623901 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:01AM (#4966098) Homepage
    Add some BlueTooth and you might finally have a decent platform to run all those household appliances you've been wanting to network at home. Interesting possibilities at least...

    • Re:You know... (Score:5, Funny)

      by io333 ( 574963 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:12AM (#4966160)
      Add some BlueTooth and you might finally have a decent platform to run all those household appliances you've been wanting to network at home. Interesting possibilities at least.

      Oh yea sure. I'm just giddy with anticipation. Soon my blender will talk to my washing machine!!!!!! YES!

      Ooooooohhh BABY YES! wash and blend

      wash and blend
      wash and blend in syncronization.

      I'm sorry but I must now inform you that you are NEVER GOING TO GET A CHICK.

      sheesh.
      • Actually...I was thinking more along the lines of RAS into the home network. Issue your "startup" command while you drive home from Dinner.

        Lights come on, the heat is turned up a few notches, bath water starts running at a comfortable 106 degrees, the stereo comes on to your favorite cd...etc.

        • Re:You know... (Score:2, Interesting)

          by pboulang ( 16954 )
          Sound like Bill Gates already has [netscrap.com] this:
          Master bathtub can be filled to the right temperature and depth by Gates as he drives home from work.
        • "...the stereo comes on to your favorite cd..." ...a royalty bill is automatically sent to your house...
        • Actually...I was thinking more along the lines of RAS into the home network. Issue your "startup" command while you drive home from Dinner.

          Lights come on, the heat is turned up a few notches, bath water starts running at a comfortable 106 degrees, the stereo comes on to your favorite cd...etc.

          Right. Then when you get home, you can step on your Segway HT [segway.com] to get from one room to the other, while your Honda Asimo [honda.com] takes your Sony Aibo [aibo.com] for a walk. All while you turn into a fatter, richer, dummer target for the hoardes of hungry poor who -- if there's any justice in the universe at all -- will be sitting in old chevy panel vans right around the corner, lithe from walking and energized with righteous anger, armed with good old-fashioned baseball bats, waiting to beat your head in when your fat, affluent family finally fall asleep to the relaxing hiss of your Sonet [ergo-2000.com] System.
      • "Ooooooohhh BABY YES! wash and blend"

        I just wish I had some mod points for you, man... You made my morning....

        -cheers

      • Re:You know... (Score:5, Funny)

        by scotch ( 102596 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @01:05PM (#4967330) Homepage
        Have you ever noticed that the guys preoccupied with "getting chicks" and always telling other guys they'll never "get chicks" are likely ot an age and place in live where they are not "getting chicks" themselves? Curious phenomenon.Present post excluded, of course ;)
      • No, no, the appliances talk to the computers, not to each other. If I'm on the 3rd floor and my laundry is in the basement, it would be really nice if I could check whether the washer is done yet without walking down three flights of stairs. And it could email me when the dryer is finished, because I always forget about it.

        For that matter, it would be nice to be able to take out my Treo at the grocery store and find out how much space is left in the freezer.

      • Re:You know... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Listen Up ( 107011 )

        Dumbass, typical male.
        Here is the truth to all of you lonely geeks out there. A woman has to love you for who you are. Period. I am engaged to get married to a very, very beautiful girl. She loves me for a million reasons, but one of the most important reasons is because of my intelligence. Not all women want a stupid, dipshit male who only knows how to party, act stupid, pretend he is great, and have the intelligent conversations of an 8 year old who has managed to stumble into his 20's (or 30's unfortunately for some). I never thought I would stand a chance with the girl I am love with. Every guy I knew (and a lot I didn't know) at college wanted her. I worked up the nerve to ask her out one night. I thought to myself "I should be cool and fun like all of the other guys...DON'T TOUCH THE COMPUTER...TALK ABOUT FUN, PARTYING, STUPID SHIT. BE FUN AND STUPID." But, then I said "You know what...f*ck it...if she doesn't love me for who I am then I won't be able to spend the rest of my life with her anyways." The first night we were together we spent all evening talking about Mesopotamian history and the roots of Eastern philosophy. Then I fixed her laptop so she could save her homework for lecture in the morning (we were still in college when we met). Stupid woman are fun for about 1 date (where the conversation is about as intelligent as..."what's you favorite color? What's your favorite music?"). Then it's like "...duhhh...*twists hair on finger*...what are you, some kind of computer geek? This isn't any fun...What's so fun about playing on the computer? I'm going to go hang out, you wanna come with?..." To which I think to myself, "fuc*ing a, this chick sucks..." Do you know what is more of a turn-on than getting Linux to boot on your computer, running a cluster in your lab, and/or kickin hardcore code? An intelligent woman who loves your brains, appreciates your passion for programming (and passions for everything else), and who really gets into you for who you are and for what you love. Wire up your house like the article talks about. Love your life. Be true to yourself always. Your soulmate will be there.
        PS-Since I have met my soulmate (who happens to be one of the smartest people I know...date the smart girls (and/or the artistic females if that type of person also completes you, but they can still be very smart people so they are awesome people too), they are a ton more fun and a ton more beautiful than anyone who is attractive on looks alone), my friends have all taken my advice and one of them is also engaged to get married (and his fiance' is damn smart just like him, she is really cool). And trust me...NOT all smart girls are fat or ugly. My soulmate certainly isn't fat or ugly...and neither is my bestfriends fiance' (and soulmate as I have been told by both of them :-). Not in the slightest.
    • I've been wanting to play with one of the LX chips for a while, but their development kit is too spendy for me at the moment. Is there an easy homebrew way to use these without a ton of specialized mounting equipment and a machine built PCB board?

    • Re:You know... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Add some BlueTooth...

      Off-topic, but I've always wondered - why not powerline IP instead for appliance networking? Appliances shouldn't need much bandwidth (except for electric toothbrushes), and every appliance already has a power cord, so it wouldn't add any wires. Nothing against BlueTooth, but I really don't want to add more radiation to my house.

  • But what would the uses be? Is it meant for embedded devices? That would sound like an interesting idea, having a Linux computer in each VCR and toaster... Someone could then set up a crond job to "cat /dev/heat > /mnt/toast" every morning.
    • Their stated target is embedded devices.

      What I find interesting is the cost. The chip is only $40. The board is a damn sight more expensive, but then again, it's a developer board. Production runs could easily float close to the processor cost.

      As much as I hate to say this: imagine a Beowolfe cluster of these. You could probably fit 40 of these puppies in a standard PC case space.
      • I may just be responding to flamebait here, but...

        A Beowolfe cluster is designed to disribute processing power over several CPUs with only modest bandwidth connecting them. This little bugger is optimized for network connectivity, which is good. However, at an estimated MIPS of only 100, you're distributing your Beowolfe load to a bunch of underpowered ants. Considering that you'd have additional overhead in distributing the workload to all the CPUs, it would take an army of them to surpass the processing power of a single Opteron CPU, which, incidentally, will also run the standard 2.4 kernel...

        How many MIPS are the Opterons estimated to debute at?
      • It sounds like a good idea, except:

        1. 100mips is pretty shitty. You'd need a hella lot of these and with that you'd need all the other infrastructure (that would end up consuming any savings you gained from going with cheaper chips)
        2. With the evolution of blade technology, etc... you'd be able to pack less more powerful machines into the same space.

        Now with that all said, These things can address 4gigs of ram. If you could bump up the CPU power to say 800mips and combine this with some creative packaging... you might have a good solution...
    • Embedded or small devices, yes. I see a number of possibilities with this thing. One can make extremely small pcb design for low end computer type things. Want a portable network storage device? Now you can design one to fit in regular extrenal hard drive enclosure.

      About the only thing missing is a graphics controller.
    • Well, think of it. If the bandwidth can go high enough, you don't need a cradle for syncing your pda anymore, unless you need that uber-high speed of moving mp3's to it. Otherwise, syncing contacts and small documents won't be a terrible thing. Just put it next to your computer and hit a sync button on the pda :)

      Or, think of the applications with thinsg such as component systems. Someone would just have to write one protocol, using blue tooth, and one device and control another without every device to have a wire connecting out. Mmm?

      Hell, use it in christmas lights and maybe do some neat lighting with it.
      I can go on and on :)
      • I do this now, I have the IPAQ with wi-fi and bluetooth built in, they're a little pricey right now, but the cost is coming down.

        I'd rather see less synching and more builtin pda capabilities, why have a host at all? they should be thinking peer.
    • Someone could then set up a crond job to "cat /dev/heat > /mnt/toast" every morning.

      No, even better, instead of this latest chip, the device could instead use athlons. So instead of doing a cat /dev/heat you just need to flip the power switch.

      Wake On Lan anyone?
  • ETRAX 100LX has almost everything you need included

    * 32 bit RISC CPU core
    * 10/100 MBit Ethernet controller
    * 4 asynchronous serial ports
    * 2 synchronous serial ports
    * 2 USB ports
    * 2 Parallel ports
    * 4 ATA (IDE) ports
    * 2 Narrow SCSI ports (or 1 Wide)
    * Support for SDRAM, Flash, EEPROM, SRAM, ...

    this is a great technology that would probably be really usefull in laptop/notebook computers or even really small desktop (entire computer into the flatpanel display!

    but really, serial ports? parallel ports? i'm not too sure that the scsi is going to win them any points either, but what the hell. they might have well integrated a video controler, an audio controler, and a 9600 baud modem to boot!

    • Re:enough of the 1990 hardware!! (Score:5, Informative)

      by nick-less ( 307628 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:10AM (#4966147)
      but really, serial ports? parallel ports? i'm not too sure that the scsi is going to win them any points either, but what the hell. they might have well integrated a video controler, an audio controler, and a 9600 baud modem to boot!

      Well, I think they target embedded applications and not laptops here. Most embedded applications don't need sound or video capabilities and most engineers love to have serial and parallel I/O, because of their simplicity.
    • Also from the article..

      The overall approach is one suited for connectivity rather than computation, supports data transfer rates of up to 200 Mbit/s (100 Mbit Ethernet full duplex), as well as a wide range of network device applications.

      At only 100MIPS, I wouldn't want to use it in a laptop/notebook. Intel, AMD and Transmeta make better chipc for that. This one wouldn't have the computational power.

      Great technology, yes. It would make a rockin' embedded system, and could serve up static web pages fast enough to saturate a 100MB pipe. I'll be keeping an eye on it for any future applications I can dream of..

    • Re:enough of the 1990 hardware!! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by swb ( 14022 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:11AM (#4966153)
      I'd agree on the parallel port complaint, but a lot of stuff out there that won't be going away for years still uses serial ports. I'm not a programmer, but I'd wager that good ol RS232 is a simpler interface to work with than USB and probably more robust over longer runs. I don't think something like this was designed for replacing your desktop.
      • Just about everything out there has serial ports, including most Unix workstations, but not including Macs any more. Of course it's easy to get there from USB. Also USB has a very short maximum cable length, you can run (low speed) serial (9600 bps) over three wires of ordinary copper phone line for a LONG long way.

    • Re:enough of the 1990 hardware!! (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In embedded world, you want minimalistic hardware. USB requires a microcontroller with USB stack just to talk to it. It is far easier to use serial port and probably 3 lines of code to talk to a serial port. Parallel port can be interfaced pretty much directly to keypad, small character LCD, relays etc. Can'tt say the same for USB without yet another microcontroller.
    • this is a great technology that would probably be really usefull in laptop/notebook computers or even really small desktop (entire computer into the flatpanel display! but really, serial ports? parallel ports? i'm not too sure that the scsi is going to win them any points either, but what the hell. they might have well integrated a video controler, an audio controler, and a 9600 baud modem to boot!

      Speaking from an embedded-device perspective, this is heaven in a tiny package. Forget video and audio, the sync serial ports and ethernet are all I need!

      If you're looking at a small desktop (that seems to be the direction of your comments), I think the Via C3 processor on a mini-ITX board [mini-itx.com] is the direction you ought to go. Works wonderfully with Linux.

    • rant on
      I don't think this is flambait at all. I think the excessive number of connectors one need on a computer is part of the inefficiency of the industry.

      For instance, at at time when a Macs needed a single ADB port for all slow input devices, an Intel machine had two identical ports, for keyboard and mouse. These ports had to be color coded because they were not interchangeable. People hasted the few ports, but the standard made the machine easier to deal with and design for, even if a bit more expensive.

      Likewise why have serial and parallel ports on a computer. Just make everyone use serial. It is not difficult, it is no longer expensive. I mean nearly everyone has switched to USB. What was the problem? I know that we need to support legacy hardware, but the poster has a point. Why bloat clearly niche device with things people no longer need or use.

      But my real issue is with these printers and scanners that are shipped with two or three different ports. Is it really so expensive to replace the ports with and ethernet connector, at least on some of the machines. Most people have ethernet connector, and combined with a router with a DHCP server, these are easier to setup than a parallel or serial connection. I know not everyone has a router, but many people and most business have broadband, and selling broadband with a router, is, in my mind, irresponsible, but that is another rant.

      Anyway, I agree with the poster. Don't put stuff in a product just because you can and it is cheap.
      rant off

  • "Power dissipation (outputs open): 350mW typ., 610 mW max." At this low how does the drain of Ethernet and Bluetooth and of course the display compare?

  • Christ you people are stupid. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:11AM (#4966154)
    So many complaints about the "obsolete" hardware - FUCKING DUH! It's a system-on-a-chip, running a common OS that is relatively easy to write software for, using tried-and-true peripheral technology and with enough horsepower to be used in all manner of embedded systems.

    Sure, you wouldn't use it in a laptop or even a PDA, but that's not the target -- it can be used anywhere you need a simple PC to do simple tasks, but you don't want the huge and power-hungry old 386 you've got sitting in your closet/warehouse.

    The thing's running Linux and is capable of networking for fuck's sake. Use your imagination.

  • What Most People See (Score:4, Funny)

    by webword ( 82711 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:13AM (#4966167) Homepage
    What was posted...

    "goombah99 writes "Axis Computer has announced a single chip Linux based computer that integrates 2MB Flash, 8MB SDRAM and an Ethernet transceiver into a single chip with a 27mm x 27mm footprint. 'Just add power to the chip and you have a Linux computer with network connection.' It runs the Linux 2.4 kernel without any patches. The announcement says the chip is 'available' but the tech specs are labeled as preliminary, and the order form on the web site is broken, so it's hard to confirm if it is out yet or not. Some specifications in html and pdf are available at the company's web site."

    What most non-Slashdot folks see...

    "yak yak yak writes "Computer blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah computer blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. The announcement says the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah order form on the web site is broken, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah company's web site."

    Reference: http://www.wonderdog.com/farside.htm [wonderdog.com]
  • This sounds like an excellent chip to use when building networking hardware. I want one for my toaster!

    And no, it is not aimed at notebooks or desktops you imbecills!

  • versus PC104 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Hayzeus ( 596826 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:20AM (#4966198) Homepage
    The developer board at $299 (with no support) looks pretty reasonable, although you can get a more capable PC-104 board for the same price.

    Still,given the feature set and the low power consumption this is a pretty appealing package, but I think even the embedded the applications are somewhat limited.

    • Developer board? Bah. I never believed in developer boards, I've had some that fried the chip on powerup. I'd just make my own board....what's that? It's a ball-grid-array? Nevermind.

      Anyway...notice that it has memory controllers too. That could be pretty useful. Still not a really powerful device; I could see these being useful for network-based home automation, with a touch-screen in every room (that run distributed.net or folding when idle).

      Speaking of PC-104, I picked up a WinSystems board the other day for less than $50. This guy has a huge number of them on eBay, and has saturated the market. These board still go for over $500 each, and the John Carmack Armadillo project used one until they crashed their rocket. Has all the bells and whistles (IDE, floppy, vga, ethernet, LPT, 4 serial, keyboard, 48 I/O, SRAM or Diskonchip, watchdog), only an AMD 5x86 133Mhz chip though. I'm using mine for a networked CNC miller/router [to be constructed...]. Search eBay for pc104 and you will find them, I booted mine up the other day and it runs Linux fine. ;-) They are actually an EBX board (6"x8") but have a PC-104 bus connector on top.

      Now if only that other guy would hurry up and send my bridge driver chips...then I will have a trio of smoothly whirring stepper motors....


      • Just an fyi:

        As of the 15th of this month, they're still using PC104 [armadilloaerospace.com] over at Armadillo Aerospace.
  • Lots of people have heard that the PlayStation3 will have "Cell computing", which is when they have lots of tiny cpu's clustered together each doing an extremely small part of the computing process. This will make programs using threads REALLY fast. I hope they have a cell computing device (like a cell computing PDA) made out of some of these things!

    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!

    • It's probably a crazy idea, but at 27x27mm you could fit over 50 of these on an atx PCB. And that's still 2D, stacked you could easily fit a hundred in a litre (though heat may be a problem even with embedded harware like this one).

      Of course, compared to desktop computers these tinies have far from impressive specs (see: rants by others), but power isn't necessesarily measured in terms of Mhz/GBs. Power can come in numbers as well. And in that case, price per piece is more important, as well as Watt/instruction and physical size.

      Now let's see about bulk prices...

      ---
      The prospects for high-end PCs are far overrated
  • Sony etc. want to make a linux Media PC - well here we have a chip thats ideal for it.

    Same goes for PVRs, firewalls, net Connected Storage.....

    • this is a far cry from ideal for a media PC.

      The cpu has nowhere near enough processing power to perform multimedia functions, and this is deliberate.

      The CPU/Board is intended to be used in embedded devices... things like routers and firewalls, etc; not for dvd players and game consoles.

  • Open computer (Score:2, Informative)

    by brejc8 ( 223089 )
    I am about to work on an FPGA single chip computer. Taking an open MIPS(ish) core and connecting it up to some peripherals.
    The best thing about its is that it will be completely open.
    Opencomputer [man.ac.uk] will start as an FPGA but I am hoping to find a good excuse to manufacture it along with an asynchronous version [man.ac.uk] and make my self a fully open PC.

  • How do we know this? (Score:2, Informative)

    by bconway ( 63464 )
    It runs the Linux 2.4 kernel without any patches.

    Just to break out the tinfoil, how do we know? I think that if I were to make Linux work on a device my company produced, I'd claim it worked without any patches, and thus only point people to a vanilla source, and not have to release any of my changes for my competitors to see. I'm no fan of the GPL (and bash it regularly), but this seems like a viable tactic. Saying that you can't get the code to work on their chip doesn't seem like much in the way of indisputable evidence that they altered the code, either.
    • The thing is a MIPS. Most MIPS processors work without any patches on recent 2.4 kernels.

      Besides it is basic economics for them not to lie. They sell the boards pretty cheap, so you buy one to see if this will be the platform for your next device. How long would it take you to find out that you need to patch the 2.4 kernel to get it to run on this thing? If it doesn't work, they sell no devices. They are going to make no money selling a couple hundred developer boards.

    • Re:How do we know this? (Score:2, Informative)

      by exolon ( 636845 )
      It runs on the 2.4 kernel without patches because the CPU architecture and HW drivers have been in the vanilla 2.4 kernel for a long time (see arch/cris).

      The developer.axis.com site also has the additional tools you need for developing like compiler packages and flash downloading tools etc.

  • Is it an ARM? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brejc8 ( 223089 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:31AM (#4966255) Homepage Journal
    It doesnt want to say what processor it is.
    All I can see is that it is a RISC (what isnt) and has 15 x 32bit registers.
    Sounds like an ARM ut why dont they say so.

  • Is shipping, and Bluetooth is avail, too (Score:5, Informative)

    by diegoq ( 149586 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:39AM (#4966295) Journal

    It is available.

    The chip itself is $40. The eval board for the ETRAX 100LX is available for $299 [axis.com] as well as a version with bluetooth for $495. [axis.com]

    Finally, the order page for both of these is at https://www.axis.com/shop/technology.htm [axis.com].

  • How long before... (Score:3, Funny)

    by slipgun ( 316092 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:43AM (#4966317)
    With a name as suggestive as Axis, how long until Dubya decides to carpet bomb them?

  • Now if it was a FORTH machine on a chip (Score:5, Funny)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Friday December 27, 2002 @10:44AM (#4966326)
    We'd be talking real power...

  • Seminar (Score:2, Interesting)

    by holla2040 ( 582764 )
    Folks,

    This Axis announcement is GREAT news!! This isn't motherboard announcement, nor a single board computer announcement. This chip running Linux is about a square inch!! I've spoken to the product manager about this MCM (multichip module) and decided to teach a seminar in March using it. See my website [embeddedli...facing.com] for specific information on January 2nd.

    Why a seminar?? OEM pricing for this chip and future generations (more flash and RAM) will be less than $50 US. Probably around $35 after production is going. When developers get the power of Linux with a simple hardware interface to the real world, there will be an explosion of embedded Linux devices. This chips makes it simple: add power, an clock and you're off. I'm teaching a seminar so that I'll become familiar with the chip and let others in on this great new product.

    Where's my toaster??

    Hey do you want to ski, snowboard, ice climb and learn about the power of this Axis chip? Contact me.
    Craig
  • Don't confuse your one-off projects with the real world market. At $40 (or maybe $20 in volume) this chip is pretty expensive for some of the applications I'd like to see:
    • Put a web/cgi server in your VCR/DVD/Tivo. Maybe real people can finally program these things!
    • Instrument other consumer systems (plumbing, hvac, weather, kitchen, etc.) with LAN-connected controllers. httpd when a human wants to interact directly. X10 on steroids.
    This chip shows where the embedded market is heading. Very low chip cost, standards based IO and OS will get us lots of interesting options.
  • ...and ethernet. Perfectly for building small routers (2 WANs 1 LAN, at least). I have seen routers with much more limited hardware (Motorola's QUICC, for instance, which lack a MMU)

  • A MCM is not a single chip (Score:4, Informative)

    by Internet Dog ( 86949 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @11:08AM (#4966481)
    The title is misleading. The device is a multi-chip-module, not a single chip computer. They have packaged a number of chips in a very small package, but it is not a single chip. A MCM will cost more to manufacture than a true single chip computer because it requires a ceramic substrate to be manufactured with very small trace widths connecting the chips that are placed on the substrate.

  • Nice X term/embedded device (Score:3, Insightful)

    by j_kenpo ( 571930 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @11:26AM (#4966590)
    This might be a nice setup for a remote X-terminal (or at least a dumb terminal) with a little more development on interfacing with the chip. It would also be a decent embedded device. Ive been messing with one of those "web server on a chip" microcontrollers, but Ive been thinking that something like this would blow it out of the water. With a little bit of creative development using the serial i/o and timer on the chip, you can make this thing a decent micro-controller for things like motor controls, PWM variable voltages, which would do everything that I need. I couldnt find the price, but if its competitive with the chip Im using now as a microcontroller, Id consider it...
  • I think the specs are here [axis.com]
    It is a multi-chip module integrating several dies in one package.

    The specs linked to in the story were for a run of the mill bga chip similar to a ZF linux chip. Not too exciting
  • This looks like something that could be interesting, as building Intel PCs is so easy that it is boring.

    Still, even if I bought one, I have no idea how what to mount it in or how to power it. You can't just throw it into an ATX case, can you?

  • I really wonder why they're so very, very silent about what architecture they're actually using for the CPU. "32bit RISC CPU" - well, fine. But what is it?

    Heck, you don't even find out about this "RISC" part before you click through several other pages of information. Why do they obviously try to make it such a secret?

    • It's a Cris architecture, if, you expand a recent kernel or 3.2 gcc source you'll see a bunch of stuff for cris. I have one of their development boards which doesn't use the MCM but is a 100LX based system.

      Andy

  • I bought a couple of the developer boards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hqm ( 49964 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @01:04PM (#4967316)
    For a project I worked on at Keio Univ. in Japan, we ordered some of the Axis web cams, which use an older
    version of the same chip, as well as some of the developer boards.

    The system works as advertised; developing software and
    deploying it is very easy, you just do a "make" in the source directory on your host, and it builds the flash rom image, and you download it via ethernet with a single command. You can ftp over to the board to upload binaries or other files, and there's a telnet client.

    The only problems I had with the dev board were that it doesn't really have much useful I/O on it.
    It has three serial ports and 16 bit parallel port, which can be used as an IDE drive or USB port, but at the time we got the system, you had to kind of roll your own interface. And at the time the drivers for the parallel port weren't
    shipping standard so I had to write my own kernel
    driver for it.

  • No RISC (Score:3, Informative)

    by Euphonious Coward ( 189818 ) on Friday December 27, 2002 @01:04PM (#4967320)
    If you read the specs on the CPU carefully (which I did, a couple of years back) you discover that it is not really a RISC at all, by any definition of the term. The architecture is very similar to the VAX, in fact. They just call it a RISC because that once sounded more advanced. Today, of course, calling an architecture RISC makes it seem kind of backward, but they've been saying it long enough that it's probably too late to change.

    This is not to say that the designation means much any more... people have discovered how to make the most horrendous instruction sets (read: x86) go fast with only a million (!) extra transistors or so. This CPU doesn't have those, but what matters is that it's fast enough.

    Still, it's amusing because half the complexity of the instruction set (and a substantial parcel of the chip) will never be exercised by any compiler. It's there as a sort of homage or shrine to machines from the days when programs were written in assembly language, and machines were marketed on how fancy the instruction set was, regardless of how it slowed the machine down.

    The CDC machines were exceptional: Seymour Cray really understood. Also, in the '60s, some people at IBM built the 801, which evolved into the PowerPC. The rest of the industry didn't catch on until the Stanford RISC people made their big splash.

    • The CRIS CPU architecture seems reasonable for an embedded CPU optimized for code volume, but to call it RISC is outrageous. There is nothing RISCy about CRIS. In fact it is pretty much a classic CISC, highly reminiscent of the VAX.

      Look at the complex addressing modes and variable-length instructions: hallmarks of a CISC. To quote chapter 2 of the documentation [axis.com],

      2.3 DATA ORGANIZATION IN MEMORY ...

      Data can be aligned to any address. If the data crosses a 32-bit boundary, the CPU will split the data access into two separate accesses. The use of unaligned word and dword data will thus degrade the performance.

      ... 2.4.1 Addressing Modes The CRIS CPU has four basic addressing modes. These modes are encoded in the mode field of the instruction word. The basic addressing modes are:

      • Quick immediate mode
      • Register mode
      • Indirect mode
      • Autoincrement mode (with immediate mode as a special case)
      More complex addressing modes can be achieved by combining the basic instruction word with an addressing mode prefix word. The complex addressing modes are:
      • Indexed
      • Indexed with assign
      • Offset
      • Offset with assign
      • Double indirect
      • Absolute
      The addressing modes of the CRIS CPU are

      Assembly syntax; Addressing mode
      i, j Quick immediate
      Rn Register
      Pn Special register
      [Rn] Indirect
      [Rn+] Post increment
      x, u Byte immediate
      xx, uu Word immediate
      xxxx, uuuu Dword immediate
      [Rn+Rm.m] Indexed
      [Rp=Rn+Rm.m] Indexed with assign
      [Rn+[Rm].m] Indirect offset
      [Rn+[Rm+].m] Autoincrement offset
      [Rn+x] Immediate byte offset
      [Rn+xx] Immediate word offset
      [Rn+xxxx] Immediate dword offset
      [Rp=Rn+[Rm].m] Indirect offset with assign
      [Rp=Rn+[Rm+].m] Autoincrement offset with assign
      [Rp=Rn+x] Immediate byte offset with assign
      [Rp=Rn+xx] Immediate word offset with assign
      [Rp=Rn+xxxx] Immediate dword offset with assign
      [[Rn]] Double indirect
      [[Rn+]] Double indirect with auto increment
      [uuuu] Absolute

  • Sooner or later (Score:2, Interesting)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 )
    This is the chip that I have been looking at for the last year and trying to get several systems built around it. Skip all the extra stuff.
    All should have Power Over Ethernet (POE) and skip the different connectors.
    All Systems: POE, CPU, Ram. 1'st System: 2 Compact Fash slots. This allows for either 2 disk drives or different devices. Howabout a CF ethernet so that it can become a firewall. Or a CF modem, so that it becomes a Fax Server, ppp server, or simply an interface to POTS. Or add the convertors for CF to IDE and run 2 2.5" HD (it will all fit inside the required 15 watts) or with extra power use it for network CD or DVD player.
    2'nd system: provide a USB or Firewire interface. Skip the serial connectors. By providing 4-8 USB ports (with plugin power), this becomes a convertor of USB to TCP. This also allows for network Print serving, etc.
    3'rd system: provide a small LCD screen, video chip and possibly Touch Screen input. Can be used for display Pixs, or small input around the house. Combine with the above, it can be used for irrigation, House temp controller, etc.
    There are a number of interesting things that this chip can be used for. This is just a few.
  • Every specification for every semi-conductor device I've seen has always been marked "Preliminary". My HW co-workers told me, this is to protect the vendor and allow them to make any changes they see fit in the future.

    One old crusty HW guy told me:

    "They remove the prelminary mark when they obsolete the device"

    =Shreak
  • Most of my work was done on their developer board, which is not the multi-chip-module being discussed here, but I did see the actual honest-to-goodness MCMs just before I parted ways with my previous employer (on December 16th, 2002), although they were still having some issues making them work at that time. The CPU architecture is known as CRIS, and you can download the GCC CRIS cross-compiler from their website. They even have a DEB package which I installed without much difficulty under Debian/Woody.

    All in all, it's a pretty cute little system, although you'll definitely need to plan to interface it with other bits and pieces. The place I was working at was mostly dealing with Voice over IP (VoIP) applications, and so interfaced it with some telephony-style audio chips via one of the synchronous serial interfaces.

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