440EP and Linux and MontaVista

(off-list ancestor, not in this archive)

I posted some somewhat disparaging remarks about the cost of MontaVista
440EP Linux, and the quality of a previous dist. we got from them. Time
to set the record a bit straighter, after talking to the nice folks
there, and with our Linux guy here.  I wouldn't want to leave my earlier
post as the final word...

1. The ARM port we got did work (I said it didn't...), but our Linux guy
thought it low quality.  In MontaVista's defence, however, this was a
long, long time ago (5? years). MontaVista (and the rest of us) have
evolved a lot since then - I'm sure their current ARM port works just
dandy.

2. 25K for a company planning to sell 100K or 1M units is a small price
to have a stable, well supported OS.  Our problem is that we don't have
those volumes to ammortize the cost over, and we are a cash starved
startup. And we chose a processor which is not well supported yet, and
really had a wrench thrown in the works when IBM sold it to AMCC,
because it probably stalled Linux on that processor for 6 - 12 months
(AMCC only just recently hired a director of software for there 4xx
embedded processor division, so I expect that all this will get
straightened out with funding Timesys, etc., but unfortunately too late
for us. We need Linux now.)

For us, it appears most cost effective to pay to port existing drivers
to the 440EP. We need better RT performance than vanilla 2.6, so we will
also port RTAI.  From this, we expect a stable OS with better than 2.6
performance, but we will have to support it ourselves. Although we are
still in discussion with Timesys, so we may work something out there
yet.

Anyways, the bottom line remains that the cost of entry into Linux the
440EP processor is much higher than other Motorola, Intel, AMD, etc.
processors. I knew we were in for bumps when IBM sold the division, but
the processor has some unique features and performance that we couldn't
live without. I'm hoping that a bit of kicking and screaming will bring
AMCC up to par with the other guys...

Rick

Ps. No, MontaVista didn't threaten to sue me ;) I just don't like
leaving remarks around that are attributed to me that probably need
further explanation in order not to mislead.

And this way lets me send more missiles in areas I'm not thrilled with,
because people will understand that I am not just somebody who likes to
flame needlessly.  It's all about making things better.

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