Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 20 Jul 2007 09:27:30 +0200 | From | Uwe Hermann <> | Subject | Re: Patches for REALLY TINY 386 kernels |
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On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 03:41:02PM -0500, Matt Mackall wrote: > On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 10:10:43PM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote: > > > > I was waiting for someone to make that "point" ... > > > > > > > > Every byte you can shave off the compressed kernel image is another > > > byte you can use for userspace on your FLASH. > > > > Now let's see if that 1MB 386 contains any flash at all. Guesses? > > I've certainly worked on such devices. I expect there are more of them > still in service, than, say, Voyagers. > > I haven't looked at whether this CPUID stuff is worth the trouble, I'm > just responding to your argument about init code. Init code is > definitely not free. It takes up storage space, which can be extremely > valuable.
Ack.
Some people are putting Linux kernels in the "BIOS" (i.e. ROM chip) when using LinuxBIOS (www.linuxbios.org). It _does_ make a lot of difference there how big the kernel is. At the moment you can't do that with anything smaller than a 1 MB chip. But if people could use 512 KB chips because the kernel is small enough that would sure be a great thing.
In such scenarios every single byte matters.
Uwe. -- http://www.hermann-uwe.de | http://www.holsham-traders.de http://www.crazy-hacks.org | http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] | |