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This started long before Pi. StrongARM existed 20 years ago and the new generation of application processors which pushed forward ARM started around 2005 (Atmel
by flyinglizard 5y ago
This started long before Pi. StrongARM existed 20 years ago and the new generation of application processors which pushed forward ARM started around 2005 (Atmel, TI, Freescale, Qualcomm and others) with the ARM9 core.
Pi entered a mature ecosystem, it just made it a bit more consumer/newbie facing but the system level foundations were all there.
Ironically the Pi isn’t even particularly well supported in terms of drivers compared to commercial offerings.
- alpanka 5y agoNo, but pi is what gave us the software! While strongarm and others have been around longer, none had any real mass market hold. With Pi & co, you can build a (slow) server with $35. You can build a k8 cluster with $150. That's why we have cross platform packages for almost anything server related.
- flyinglizard 5y agoYou could do just that before. Cross compiling for ARM is an ancient, dark craft. All that changed for the better (and admittedly much better for the hobbyists) is getting prebuilt binaries in the major distributions.
- alpanka 5y agoBefore pi & co, cross compiling was a black art. You often needed to build your own toolchain and the target environment were often not standardized either so you would need different compilers for each target. Fast forward to today, you can apt-get cross-compilers and build tools.
- Nursie 5y agoWhile it was a hassle, you could use pre-built cross compilers on debian before the Pi came along, as I was in 2010/11. Multi-arch helped a lot when it was introduced too.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoWas that so hard? Arduino was easy.