Messages in this thread | | | From | "David Schwartz" <> | Subject | RE: Compiling C++ modules | Date | Wed, 3 May 2006 13:51:56 -0700 |
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> >In the bad old days, performance was the number one priority because > >computers were slow and resources were scarce
> And that is still *very much* the case on huge numbers of systems > running Linux --> Embedded systems <---
Yes and no. Any embedded system likely to run a full Linux kernel today has at least ten times the performance and resources of the computers from the bad old days.
The majority of embedded systems that run very low-end hardware perform tasks where performance is not particularly important anyway (microwave oven, elevator). Those that perform more sophisticated tasks generally have correspondingly more impressive hardware.
In my experience, reliability is much more important than performance in most embedded systems. If C++ results in cleaner and better organized code, for some particular piece of code, it would be madness to choose C out of fear that C++ will perform worse. (Of course, that's a big 'if'.)
In fact, in all the years I developed embedded systems (from industrial knitting machine controllers to medical devices) I can't remember a single project where performance was the number one priority, or even a particularly high one. Feature set, reliability, development cost and time, ease of use, and the like were typically way ahead of performance. Perhaps for a router or something like that it would be different. But I do not believe that embedded systems in general are a class where performance is more important than elsewhere.
There are small embedded operating systems that are written primarily in C++.
DS
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