> Hello folks!
>
> I am thinking whether linux can be ported to a DSP chip. I would like to
> know if it is possible, given that it doesn't have a cache and not a huge
> amount of memory etc. If anybody thinks it is possible, can you please tell
> me where to start and how to go about doing it?
>
> When I say linux, I don't mean linux servers; just the basic kernel with
> its networking features. I am toying with this idea because a DSP chip is
> considerably cheaper than the present day pentium.
A DSP is very much a number crunching machine. Most are more specifically
polynomial crunching machines. They lack almost everything a general purpose
OS like Linux needs - a general purpose instruction set, MMU, large memory
support, etc.
Take an application like a modem. The DSP can do all the heavy calculations
for the signal processing part well. Now you need a little management and V42
error correction and data compression. Try doing that part on a DSP and the
code gets large, slow and _very_ ugly.
Real time OSes do exist for some DSPs (e.g. SPOX), but they are _very_ much
specialist DSP OSes, and they ain't too pretty.
Steve
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