Fw: nftl

Fw: nftl

[Jimmy Brian Christanthio]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Brian Christanthio" <jimmy@soft-v.com>
To: <dwmw2@infradead.org>
Sent: Wednesday, 09 May, 2001 1:53 PM
Subject: Fw: nftl


> > Dear sir,
> >
> > We have recently downloaded the nftl.c from your repository. Our system is the VR4121 using the
> Intel
> > Strata Flash. If we use your code to establish a sector of 1MB as a drive, can we also have XIP
on
> > it? That is, can we execute on the flash instead of from the SDRAM?
> >
> > I understand you have the XIP component in working stage, appreciate if you could assist us by
> > providing the link or the source codes.
> >
> > Thank you for you kind attention.
> >
> > With Best Regards
> > Jimmy Brian Christanthio
> >
> >
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Re: Fw: nftl

[David Woodhouse]

jimmy@soft-v.com said:
> Our system is the VR4121 using the Intel Strata Flash. If we use your code
> to establish a sector of 1MB as a drive, can we also have XIP on it? 
> That is, can we execute on the flash instead of from the SDRAM?

You cannot use NFTL on that. Technically, you could use FTL, but in some 
countries patents may prevent you from doing so. If you want a writable 
filesystem, JFFS is probably the best bet. 

We don't yet have support for XIP. It would require a special filesystem 
which aligns pages of the files at page-aligned addresses in the flash 
chips. In general, compression is far more useful than XIP, because RAM is 
cheaper than flash, so nobody's yet implemented this.

I started hacking on such an xipfs once. I don't recall how far I got with 
it - you're welcome to a copy of that if you want it, although I suspect 
you'd to better to start with a clean copy of romfs and do it again.

If you require a _writable_ filesystem, it's going to be extremely 
difficult to do XIP.

--
dwmw2

Re: Fw: nftl

[Ollie Lho]

David Woodhouse wrote:
> 
> jimmy@soft-v.com said:
> > Our system is the VR4121 using the Intel Strata Flash. If we use your code
> > to establish a sector of 1MB as a drive, can we also have XIP on it?
> > That is, can we execute on the flash instead of from the SDRAM?
> 
> You cannot use NFTL on that. Technically, you could use FTL, but in some
> countries patents may prevent you from doing so. If you want a writable
> filesystem, JFFS is probably the best bet.
> 
> We don't yet have support for XIP. It would require a special filesystem
> which aligns pages of the files at page-aligned addresses in the flash
> chips. In general, compression is far more useful than XIP, because RAM is
> cheaper than flash, so nobody's yet implemented this.
> 
> I started hacking on such an xipfs once. I don't recall how far I got with
> it - you're welcome to a copy of that if you want it, although I suspect
> you'd to better to start with a clean copy of romfs and do it again.
> 
> If you require a _writable_ filesystem, it's going to be extremely
> difficult to do XIP.
> 

Agenda PDA seems to have XIP CRAMfs. You probably should take a look
at that.

Ollie