From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from dell-paw-3.cambridge.redhat.com ([195.224.55.237] helo=passion.cambridge.redhat.com) by pentafluge.infradead.org with esmtp (Exim 3.22 #1 (Red Hat Linux)) id 18NqkK-0003KI-00 for ; Mon, 16 Dec 2002 08:37:04 +0000 From: David Woodhouse In-Reply-To: <43CB1396676FD4119F03001083FD299401A1C8CB@neptune.kirkland.local> References: <43CB1396676FD4119F03001083FD299401A1C8CB@neptune.kirkland.local> To: Paul Nash Cc: "Linux-MTD (E-mail)" Subject: Re: Intel sez: Synchronous Flash and XIP is the future -- thoughts? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 09:07:42 +0000 Message-ID: <1914.1040029662@passion.cambridge.redhat.com> Sender: linux-mtd-admin@lists.infradead.org Errors-To: linux-mtd-admin@lists.infradead.org List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Linux MTD discussion mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: paulnash@wildseed.com said: > so to really get the RAM reduction benefits of XIP, you'd have to not > use compression, which means you'd probably need twice as much flash. > Is that a reasonable conclusion? Yep. Especially so for those who sell flash chips, by an amazing coincidence :) The power saving point is fair -- flash does take less power than RAM. But if you're _that_ short of power, you're likely to be using expensive (but low-power) SRAM, and have the rest of the system so tightly specified that you'll be more likely to be using something like eCos on it, not Linux. With the chips available today and in the near future, XIP, at least for a writable flash chip, makes virtually zero sense on Linux. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is either on crack, trying to sell you something, or both. -- dwmw2