I’m excited about it. I am seeing one of those single chip SSDs being added to a rasberry pi-like PC in the very near future.
When I first read about it, I actually jumped out of my chair. I also like the idea of combining RAM, CPU, and GPU into a single chip, which is what they did with the rasberry pi. I wonder...do you happen to know where the BIOS chip is on a rasberry pi? Is that also combined with the CPU/GPU/RAM?
My interest has been following Linux activity....and there is a lot of activity in low overhead verions of Linux Distros.
...for older computers....
And :
AMD targets embedded market with RTOS deal
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Published on 28th March 2012 by Gareth Halfacre
AMD has made clear its intentions to take on the likes of ARM, MIPS and Intel (naturally) in the lucrative market for embedded system processors, adding official support for one of the most popular real-time operating systems to its G-Series accelerated processing units.
Designed for use in embedded systems, including set-top boxes, gaming systems, information kiosks, point-of-sale systems and thin client terminals, AMD's G-Series is a low-power x86 offering which brings the flexibility of a desktop instruction set architecture to a market largely dominated by reduced instruction set chips (RISC) from the likes of ARM and MIPS.
It's a market in which AMD's long-time rival Intel is showing growing interest, positioning its x86-based Atom CE and related processors as flexible alternatives to the traditional RISC offerings from its competitors. Clearly, AMD isn't going to let Intel muscle in on a new market without a little dust-up.
Key to the success of any embedded processor is its support for a real-time operating system, or RTOS. Unlike a traditional operating system, an RTOS uses clever algorithms to ensure that tasks given to the processor complete in a highly predictable timescale with minimum variation, or 'jitter.' A task that takes ten microseconds to complete in an RTOS should always take ten microseconds, regardless of what the processor is doing at the time the request is made.
It's not a feature a desktop user requires, but it's absolutely vital for consideration in key embedded markets including industrial control systems, navigation systems, medical and military equipment. In these markets, raw performance isn't required - but reliability and predictability are an absolute necessity.