Re: physical memory Limitation

[Dan Malek <dan@embeddededge.com>]

Ralf Baechle wrote:

> We currently don't support compressed kernels.

For AMD/Alchemy boards we do, they work very well, and there
isn't any reason it can't be supported on others.  If you
use boot code like u-boot, you would also get some pretty
nice compressed kernel and initrd support (but the MIPS kernel
doesn't have a very flexible implementation of initrd support).
These features are very useful for embedded systems to maximize
resource utilization, to provide field upgrade, and fallback
recovery methods.

> But if we were supporting it the limitation would depend on size of
> available memory and how it's used at boot time, that is the limit would
> depend on the exact system.

That's true.  For just a compressed kernel, size is no problem.
For initrd support, it's a little more of a challenge.  I have a
board with 128M of SDRAM and we regulary use 64M initrd images
for software install and upgrade.

Thanks.


	-- Dan