Re: [NTLK] Gumstix computers

From: matthiasm <mm_at_matthiasm.com>
Date: Wed Jul 23 2008 - 04:38:26 EDT

On 23.07.2008, at 00:59, Steven Frank wrote:

> It seems like a really viable platform for Einstein. I can't remember
> if Einstein does JIT for the Xscale CPU though, and I don't have a
> heck of a lot of experience with cross-compilation.

Einstein does something called "Generic JIT" which is a translation of
machine code into a CPU independent format, which is then interpreted
much faster than the assembler code, but also in C++. Paul has started
some direct translations into ARM/XScale, but no new code has been
added here since the original public release.

> I'd be willing to
> work with someone else who knows more about this stuff and see if we
> can bootstrap it on this tiny thing. It would be pretty awesome to
> see in action.

Yes, it would. Since ARM and XScale processors are compatible, it
would be much better to run the ROM natively instead of JIT.
Unfortunatly, this would require that we replace hardware-dependent
parts of the ROM with fresh code, which would be easy if we had the
source code, but close to impossible without.

> The display is 480x272 which is close, but 48 pixels narrower than a
> real Newton. It's 4.3" diagonally.

That would be a small problem, but solvable. Larger displays are
easily supported by NewtonOS though.

   Matthias

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Received on Wed Jul 23 05:08:34 2008

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