From owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 16 16:29:03 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-small@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-small@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 477B216A409 for ; Tue, 16 May 2006 16:29:03 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from root@parse.com) Received: from amd64.ott.parse.com (ottawa-hs-206-191-28-202.s-ip.magma.ca [206.191.28.202]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A752343D6B for ; Tue, 16 May 2006 16:28:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from root@parse.com) Received: from amd64.ott.parse.com (localhost.parse.com [127.0.0.1]) by amd64.ott.parse.com (8.13.4/8.13.1) with ESMTP id k4GGTPhx065520 for ; Tue, 16 May 2006 12:29:25 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from root@parse.com) Received: (from root@localhost) by amd64.ott.parse.com (8.13.4/8.13.1/Submit) id k4GGTPfN065519 for freebsd-small@freebsd.org; Tue, 16 May 2006 12:29:25 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from root) From: Robert Krten Message-Id: <200605161629.k4GGTPfN065519@amd64.ott.parse.com> To: freebsd-small@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 12:29:25 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL6] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Smallest/fastest x86 6.0 X-BeenThere: freebsd-small@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Dedicated and Embedded Systems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 16:29:07 -0000 Can anyone give me a ballpark idea on what size the smallest image would be, and how fast it could boot, for a 6.0 (or 6.1) bare bones x86 kernel with a serial driver, filesystem (suitable for a 32MB flash device; even a DOS filesystem is fine) and enough guts to load a "hello world"-sized C program, on a 500 MHz PIII class of machine? I'm hoping for something along the lines of 2-4MB and <10s ... I know it's kind of a vague question, but I'm trying to get a handle on just how "embeddable" FreeBSD is. PHK gave a talk at BSDCan 2006 last weekend, and I believe the number he guessed at was around 9MB but that was using nanoBSD; he then went on to say that picoBSD would be the way to go, but that perhaps there needed to be some more development on that front... Comments? Thanks in advance, -RK -- Robert Krten, PARSE Software Devices Realtime Systems Architecture, Consulting, Books and Training at www.parse.com Looking for Digital Equipment Corp. PDP-1 through PDP-15 minicomputers!