[asterisk-users] building a phone

[Jon Pounder]

Wilton Helm wrote:
> > I assume that the relevant application requires some non-trivial CPU 
> power. I would
> > exclude e.g. a 486-based systems.
>  
> I'm not sure that's the case.  The industry has gone in the direction 
> of throwing lots of silicon at a problem, often as an excuse for 
> poorly written code, sometimes in an interpreted language. 
just look at windows for a good/bad example of that
> There are a number of high integration CPUs out there that I suspect 
> could do this sort of thing.  I develop device controllers for a 
> variety of industry needs.  They tend to have Ethernet, RS-232, 
> sometimes 1 Mb/s synchronous communication. G711, quarter VGA color 
> LCD with touchscreen and control loops running at about a 1 ms rate.  
> The entire code takes less than 256K in C.  My choice of processor is 
> the DStni Ex (made by Lantronix and sold by Grid Connect) which is a 
> high integration, high speed 186 core with two 10/100 Ethernet Ports 
> and 256K of RAM on it in addition to the usual assortment of other 
> stuff.  The above required platform adds three support chips (one 
> being the LCD controller).  The CPU can run over 100 MHz.  Memory 
> accesses take one clock and typical instructions take two or three.  
> Cost is in the $10 to $20 range for the chip and power consumption is 
> around 1 W (the LCD backlight takes more than that!)
These days if you are writing stuff in C, the hardware platform is 
really not of ultimate importance since you can cross compile with gcc 
from just about anything to anything. What matters more is there are 
drivers available for all the other bits besides the cpu itself. I was 
just saying the other day, how I used to write pretty involved programs 
in 256 bytes in the original basic stamps. Most people today could not 
even conceive how a program could do anything useful in 256bytes let 
alone 256k or 256mb.
>  
> I'm sure there are several other comparable platforms out there, such 
> as by Digi International.  The Geode is a good candidate as are some 
> VIA chips, if one wants to use protected mode x86.  The biggest thing 
> for this is don't even consider Intel.  For most of their life they 
> have not provided cutting edge solutions for embedded use.  Most of 
> their stuff consumes too much power.  And most importantly, they are 
> targeting the very volatile, short lived PC market.  By the time you 
> get an embedded design up and running and reach market penetration, 
> you won't be able to buy the chip any more.
>  
> Wilton
>  
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