[FOSS-GPS] RTKLib MIPS requirements?

[Danny Miller]

Raspberry Pi was developed by a nonprofit entity.  They don't make money 
on them.  This already seemed to be a problem IMHO when the release date 
got pushed and production went very slowly as they released units 
basically one-by-one.  You don't usually see this sort of thing in 
capitalist enterprises.  Apple might not have enough iPads for 
"everyone" on their release date, but that's because they've convinced 
10% of the US population that they must have one on Day 1 of the release 
and they've bought up all the free mfg in China to make them.

While they made a lot of them, they're not guaranteed to make them 
forever or update the tech (it's a maintenance issue).  The Raspberry Pi 
Foundation is not only nonprofit, it's literally only 6 people.  When 
one or two moves on or gets hit by a bus, it's plausible the project 
will die.

It's also a problem that the Broadcom chip at the core of the Pi is NOT 
for sale elsewhere.  It was a special, personal agreement between 
Broadcom execs and RPF members.  There will be no competitors using the 
Broadcom chip unless things change substantially.

However, this isn't actually a problem.  The RPI is merely the vanguard 
of a new tech of cheap, powerful, single-board Linux computers.   The 
"Broadcom" chip is actually an industry-standard ARM6K core, sold as 
design IP to many OEMs.  Broadcom added the video core and memory around 
the ARM instruction core and fabbed it.  Any mfg with the ARM6K (or 
another ARM core up to the task) could do it even without the video 
core, but might be interfacing through a low-resolution LCD protocol 
hacked together, or through a terminal port (issuing and accepting ASCII 
command lines through a data port such as UART, USB, ethernet, etc).

But that's beside the point, because the Raspberry Pi will soon be 
matched by an equal or superior core running Linux.  There already ARE 
ones specified.  BeagleBoard was an early one- and expensive, for what 
it did, relatively speaking- but Moore's Law expansion applies to Single 
Board Computers.  Next year they've got the open-source OUYA gaming 
console planned for release at $99, which is a helluva LOT more power 
than the RPI.

IMHO we can expect to see commercially profitable Linux SPCs of 
comparable core power to the RPI, with supporting Linux distros, at 
Mouser, Digikey, etc within a couple of years.  Note the console RTKLIB 
sources are not machine-specific.  If the ports are hooked up, there's 
an FPU or enough core to implement FP calcs with regular instructions, 
and enough RAM, it should run.  Well you need a compiler for that core- 
but right now all this stuff is one of the ARM cores and we have GCC 
compilers for the ARM cores, and can expect a GCC for any core to come 
out in the future.

Danny

On 8/14/2012 12:56 PM, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:
> On 14/08/2012 11:31, Michele Bavaro wrote:
>> Raspberry-PI is useless for me as there is no commercial product
>> development path beyond it.
>
> Can you explain what this, 'commercial development path', means?
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