Sorry, this is going to ramble a little. First off, do you mean "run x86 programs" or "run Windows programs"? Most embedded systems run fairly simple, special purpose OSes. If the OS is portable, the alternatives are there, and I don't think x86 is much of a player in the embedded world anyway. After the Pentium generation established dominance, Intel didn't wanted to sell cheap x86's, I remember a Microprocessor Reports article, from '96 or so, where there was a statement that Intel considered it uneconomic to sell microprocessors for <$100. I.e., cheap PCs weren't in the game plan then.
The i860, from what I understand, was supposed to be a graphics coprocessor from the beginning, but then Intel got carried away with inflated mips numbers they could generate, and tried to make it general purpose. At the same time, they had the i960, I think, as a more suitable general purpose RISC-type processor, but then they shunted that off into the embedded world? Or something, I can't remember very well.
But "embedded system" isn't quite the right word for the nascent internet appliance market. That really means something that can run a web browser, which is going to end up being pretty close to a PC in processing power, just because the web browsers have gotten so bloated. Also somewhat beyond a traditional embedded system. In fact, one way or another, it may well end up pretty close to a laptop except in form factor, which would make you absolutely correct about the astute choice of target.
The interesting thing here is software. Even Microsoft is confused, the only clear signal from them is that they'd like to kill Win9x. WinCE hasn't been a roaring success, and it wasn't even ported to x86, at least originally. Now, of course, WinCE has been replace by the generic "Windows Powered", in marketese terms anyway. They also talk about some mini-NT in cellular phones and stuff like that. Beats me.
Of course, Transmeta has Linus, and Linux should be sufficient for the job, but I've noticed a lot more problems with IIS-type Web sites that Netscape can't handle of late. And the Mozilla effort, I don't know, it seems pretty slippage prone too.
Finally, on 64 bit processing, it'll be an odd sort of inflection point, since 64 bit processors have been widely available for, what, 10 years? I forget, Mips R4000 maybe? There just aren't that many things that need the big address space now. What annoyed me about Merced was that it seemed to freeze innovation in processor architecture, everybody was so afraid of mighty Intel after the Pentium Pro showed they could match RISC performance levels on x86.
Cheers, Dan. |
