5 ms·

7 MB of RAM at idle, wow. But what can it run on top of it? Dotnet? Python? Go? AFAIK even the latter has a non- negligible runtime overhead. In general I wo

7 MB of RAM at idle, wow. But what can it run on top of it? Dotnet? Python? Go? AFAIK even the latter has a non- negligible runtime overhead. In general I wonder if it's actually practically usable for common tasks one could imagine. One advantage over micro-controllers is clear, though: Dynamic loading/execution of binaries, which no microcontroller OS seems to care about (why?).

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
retrac 6y ago
For context, I currently have a 16 MHz 68030 machine with 24 MB running a recent NetBSD install, just as a lark. For simple command line things like poking around the file system over telnet, it feels pretty much like a contemporary system. It can even run the Python REPL fine, though it takes a good number of seconds to start up. Apache is no problem and it can host a website, though I imagine it would crumple with more than a dozen requests a minute or so. Actually, the only real annoyance for that kind of work is that the machine's too slow to authenticate SSL keys in a reasonable time, so logging in takes forever and you can't host an HTTPS site. Given this ARM machine is probably ~100x faster, if you're willing to add some swap for flexibility, I imagine it'd be usable for a wide variety of low-memory tasks.
- anthk 6y ago
  > Actually, the only real annoyance for that kind of work is that the machine's too slow to authenticate SSL keys in a reasonable time, so logging in takes forever and you can't host an HTTPS site. Isn't Dillo (compiled from Mercurial) with mbedtls fast enough? Also, Gopher servers like sdf.org, magical.fish or i-logout.cz would shine on that machine. Fire up lynx and go. Or better, compile sacc with tcc, it will run megafast.
- anthk 6y ago
  Instead of python, try compiling both JimTCL and the SDL "widgets". You will like it.
rndgermandude 6y ago
Languages with garbage collection and/or tons of reflection (requiring memory for bookkeeping) and/or JIT (requiring memory for on-the-fly jitted code) would indeed be a problem due to the overhead of those technologies. Python is not as "bad" as dotnet and go I'd think, as most of python is reference counted garbage collection (with a "full" GC just to break up cycles) while go and dotnet use essentially mark-and-sweep GC strategies which require a lot of object moving and thus scratch space. Running a dotnet hello-world (on x86_64 linux admittedly) gives an RSS of 26MB, most of it mapped libraries and .net assemblies, some libraries shared between processes of course, like libc/libm/ld.so. But it also maps a ton memory for the JIT and the GC (including scratch space to move objects into during gc). With some swap, it may survive on a system with 25MB of free memory, but I'd think there'd be plenty of swap-thrashing and gc thrashing going on, making that less fun. Running a python3's hello world comes in at 10MB RSS, but a large part of that is the shared libraries like libc/libm/ld.so. With some memory-conserving programming some real python programs may run just fine without excess swapping. For comparison, a hello world in C maps about 1M RSS, while a rust one maps 2MB RSS, both times a big chunk in shared libraries specially libc.
- nimmer 6y ago
  > Languages with garbage collection Nim uses GC by default and uses 512KB of RSS without any tuning. (With ARC/ORC and without libc it can run on microcontrollers with 1KB of RAM)
anthk 6y ago
TCL would run for sure.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

retrac 6y ago

For context, I currently have a 16 MHz 68030 machine with 24 MB running a recent NetBSD install, just as a lark. For simple command line things like poking around the file system over telnet, it feels pretty much like a contemporary system. It can even run the Python REPL fine, though it takes a good number of seconds to start up. Apache is no problem and it can host a website, though I imagine it would crumple with more than a dozen requests a minute or so. Actually, the only real annoyance for that kind of work is that the machine's too slow to authenticate SSL keys in a reasonable time, so logging in takes forever and you can't host an HTTPS site. Given this ARM machine is probably ~100x faster, if you're willing to add some swap for flexibility, I imagine it'd be usable for a wide variety of low-memory tasks.

anthk 6y ago
> Actually, the only real annoyance for that kind of work is that the machine's too slow to authenticate SSL keys in a reasonable time, so logging in takes forever and you can't host an HTTPS site. Isn't Dillo (compiled from Mercurial) with mbedtls fast enough? Also, Gopher servers like sdf.org, magical.fish or i-logout.cz would shine on that machine. Fire up lynx and go. Or better, compile sacc with tcc, it will run megafast.
anthk 6y ago
Instead of python, try compiling both JimTCL and the SDL "widgets". You will like it.

rndgermandude 6y ago

Languages with garbage collection and/or tons of reflection (requiring memory for bookkeeping) and/or JIT (requiring memory for on-the-fly jitted code) would indeed be a problem due to the overhead of those technologies. Python is not as "bad" as dotnet and go I'd think, as most of python is reference counted garbage collection (with a "full" GC just to break up cycles) while go and dotnet use essentially mark-and-sweep GC strategies which require a lot of object moving and thus scratch space. Running a dotnet hello-world (on x86_64 linux admittedly) gives an RSS of 26MB, most of it mapped libraries and .net assemblies, some libraries shared between processes of course, like libc/libm/ld.so. But it also maps a ton memory for the JIT and the GC (including scratch space to move objects into during gc). With some swap, it may survive on a system with 25MB of free memory, but I'd think there'd be plenty of swap-thrashing and gc thrashing going on, making that less fun. Running a python3's hello world comes in at 10MB RSS, but a large part of that is the shared libraries like libc/libm/ld.so. With some memory-conserving programming some real python programs may run just fine without excess swapping. For comparison, a hello world in C maps about 1M RSS, while a rust one maps 2MB RSS, both times a big chunk in shared libraries specially libc.

nimmer 6y ago
> Languages with garbage collection Nim uses GC by default and uses 512KB of RSS without any tuning. (With ARC/ORC and without libc it can run on microcontrollers with 1KB of RAM)

anthk 6y ago

TCL would run for sure.