Intel sez: Synchronous Flash and XIP is the future -- thoughts?

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <1914.1040029662 at passion.cambridge.redhat.com> you wrote:
> 
> The power saving point is fair -- flash does take less power than RAM. But
> if you're _that_ short of power, you're likely to be using expensive (but
> low-power) SRAM, and have the rest of the system so tightly specified that
> you'll be more likely to be using something like eCos on it, not Linux.

Agreed.

> With the chips available today and in the near future, XIP, at least for a
> writable flash chip, makes virtually zero sense on Linux. Anyone who tries
> to tell you otherwise is either on crack, trying to sell you something, or
> both.

Also you might find problems running recent (and future)  kernels  in
XIP  mode  -  the kernel text segment is often not exactly read-only.
Especially when you use one f the existing real-time extensions  (but
not only then). It seems the amount of tweaking that is necessary for
XIP  is  growing  with  each new kernel release - to a level where it
becomes impractical.


Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87  Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88  Email: wd at denx.de
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