Robot VM options

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Robot VM options

Robert F. Scheer-2
I've tossed the idea of Squeak out to the Portland Area Robotics Society
group list and the response is building up (although a bit sluggish).

One question that immediately arose was whether Squeak is limited to the
"Big 3" OS's or is there a VM for other embedded processors maybe
without OS's.  

The Swiki says Squeak VM's are supported for Mac, MS, RISC and flavors
of UNIX.

I remember reading somewhere that a student implemented a VM on a native
uP as a Summer project.

Has there been much VM development on embedded uP's.

Is there any work on a Squeak OS on any platform?

Thanks for the support!

- Robert


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Re: Robot VM options

timrowledge

On 17-Dec-07, at 4:13 PM, Robert F. Scheer wrote:

> I've tossed the idea of Squeak out to the Portland Area Robotics  
> Society
> group list and the response is building up (although a bit sluggish).
>
> One question that immediately arose was whether Squeak is limited to  
> the
> "Big 3" OS's

No - it's been ported to many systems. I've supported the RISC OS port  
for ten years as well as having done several other minimal/no OS ports.

> or is there a VM for other embedded processors maybe
> without OS's.
>
> The Swiki says Squeak VM's are supported for Mac, MS, RISC and flavors
> of UNIX.
That would be RISC OS, as in Acorn, as in the original inventors of  
the ARM cpu.

>
>
> I remember reading somewhere that a student implemented a VM on a  
> native
> uP as a Summer project.
>
> Has there been much VM development on embedded uP's.
Mitsubishi M32R/D
Interval Research 'MediaPad'
MITS
most other small machines seem to have a cut down linux put on them.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful random insult:- Put a lens in each ear and you've got a  
telescope.



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Re: Robot VM options

Robert F. Scheer-2
Thanks Tim.  I don't know anything about RISC OS or the specific micros'
that have native ports.  But you're right, anything that hosts a
mini-Linux should work.

C and C++ are often used to write low-level code for robots on 8, 16 and
32 bit processors made by Atmel, Microchip, Freescale, Parallax and so
on.  These are heavily oriented to analog and digital I/O with sensors
and motors.  

I know many people would like to get away from the letter C.

- Robert

On Mon, 2007-12-17 at 16:28 -0800, tim Rowledge wrote:

> On 17-Dec-07, at 4:13 PM, Robert F. Scheer wrote:
>
> > I've tossed the idea of Squeak out to the Portland Area Robotics  
> > Society
> > group list and the response is building up (although a bit sluggish).
> >
> > One question that immediately arose was whether Squeak is limited to  
> > the
> > "Big 3" OS's
>
> No - it's been ported to many systems. I've supported the RISC OS port  
> for ten years as well as having done several other minimal/no OS ports.
>
> > or is there a VM for other embedded processors maybe
> > without OS's.
> >
> > The Swiki says Squeak VM's are supported for Mac, MS, RISC and flavors
> > of UNIX.
> That would be RISC OS, as in Acorn, as in the original inventors of  
> the ARM cpu.
>
> >
> >
> > I remember reading somewhere that a student implemented a VM on a  
> > native
> > uP as a Summer project.
> >
> > Has there been much VM development on embedded uP's.
> Mitsubishi M32R/D
> Interval Research 'MediaPad'
> MITS
> most other small machines seem to have a cut down linux put on them.
>
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Useful random insult:- Put a lens in each ear and you've got a  
> telescope.
>
>
>
>


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Re: Robot VM options

Jon Hylands
On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:05:36 -0800, "Robert F. Scheer"
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Thanks Tim.  I don't know anything about RISC OS or the specific micros'
> that have native ports.  But you're right, anything that hosts a
> mini-Linux should work.

I'm going to be getting a Hammer (http://www.tincantools.com) in the next
week or two, and I definitely will be getting Squeak running on it.

Hey Tim - what do you think? A 200 MHz ARM9 in a footprint the size of a
DIP-40 chip...

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      [hidden email]      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Raptor (Small Biped Velociraptor Robot)
           http://www.huv.com/blog

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Re: Robot VM options

timrowledge

On 17-Dec-07, at 5:05 PM, Jon Hylands wrote:
>
> I'm going to be getting a Hammer (http://www.tincantools.com) in the  
> next
> week or two, and I definitely will be getting Squeak running on it.
>
> Hey Tim - what do you think? A 200 MHz ARM9 in a footprint the size  
> of a
> DIP-40 chip...
Not bad for size. A bit different to the old days when the ARM system  
required a set of 4 chips to get going, aside from the ram/rom/
support. Performance should be reasonable at around 15M bc/sec and  
around a million sends/sec. Just don't expect to run Morphic nicely :-)

Shouldn't you be using an ARM11X6JF-S by now? 600MHz, vector floating  
point h/w, bigger caches and TCM etc.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
A fool and his money are soon partying



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Re: Robot VM options

Jon Hylands
On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:19:18 -0800, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Not bad for size. A bit different to the old days when the ARM system  
> required a set of 4 chips to get going, aside from the ram/rom/
> support. Performance should be reasonable at around 15M bc/sec and  
> around a million sends/sec. Just don't expect to run Morphic nicely :-)

Nope, this is strictly for an embedded headless robot controller.

> Shouldn't you be using an ARM11X6JF-S by now? 600MHz, vector floating  
> point h/w, bigger caches and TCM etc.

Well, the gumstix I am using has a 600 MHz XScale on it. If you can point
me to a board in that size range with that chip on it, I'd be happy...

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      [hidden email]      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Raptor (Small Biped Velociraptor Robot)
           http://www.huv.com/blog

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Re: Robot VM options

timrowledge

On 17-Dec-07, at 6:26 PM, Jon Hylands wrote:
>
>> Shouldn't you be using an ARM11X6JF-S by now? 600MHz, vector floating
>> point h/w, bigger caches and TCM etc.
>
> Well, the gumstix I am using has a 600 MHz XScale on it. If you can  
> point
> me to a board in that size range with that chip on it, I'd be happy...
the smallest thing I know of using that stuff is an iPhone :-)

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: SDR: Shift Disk Right



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Re: Robot VM options

Jon Hylands
In reply to this post by timrowledge
On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:19:18 -0800, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Not bad for size. A bit different to the old days when the ARM system  
> required a set of 4 chips to get going, aside from the ram/rom/
> support. Performance should be reasonable at around 15M bc/sec and  
> around a million sends/sec. Just don't expect to run Morphic nicely :-)

So, you were close...

15,640,273 bytecodes/sec
502,667 sends/sec

Kinda off on the sends though. A 600 MHz gumstix (XScale) gets this:

35,694,366 bytecodes/sec
1,444,513 sends/sec

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      [hidden email]      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Raptor (Small Biped Velociraptor Robot)
           http://www.huv.com/blog