why-o-why (u/why-o-why)

why-o-why commented on Arduino UNO Q bridges high-performance computing with real-time control arduino.cc/product-uno-q/... · Posted by u/doener

LarsKrimi · 4 hours ago

> Most white box appliance makers use zephyr

Most? Like who? Looking at Zephyr's member page it's just chip vendors

why-o-why · 2 hours ago

Can't say, and you're not obliged to believe me. The vendors are just the companies supporting it. Companies that use it aren't going to announce it. Think about it: if it is just vendors on the site that would mean nobody is using it.

why-o-why commented on Arduino UNO Q bridges high-performance computing with real-time control arduino.cc/product-uno-q/... · Posted by u/doener

tliltocatl · 4 hours ago

> What? It has its own tooling.

It uses KConfig (which is Linux specific-tool) and devicetree (which has origins in OpenFirmware but is nowadays maintained by Linux). And these are over-complicated overkill for MCUs. KConfig is oriented towards generating a nice-looking menu interface for kernel builders to pick and match from a set of well-tested configurations, it provides no debug aid for "where the option I enabled but didn't got into the build actually got rejected". DTS originally works as boot-time configuration format, which is silly for a MCU so Zephyr process it into a set of C macros. Not a bad idea in itself, but the error messages are as cryptic as it gets - and sometimes stuff get silently disabled because of a missing dependency with no build warning.

> Huh? What does this even mean?

You cannot have a portable interface for timers, comparators, peripheral interconnect, programmable logic - all the MCU goodies.

> That's literally how it an RTOS works.

You don't allocate a separate thread stack for something you do once an hour - not unless it's a high-criticality task. You don't constantly poll a sensor that consumes 10mA on a device that has 10µA idle consumption budget. Zephyr does have the facility to do this the right way: workqueues (which is also a ripoff of Linux workqueues nee bottom halves). But most stock device drivers (or the network stack for that matter) don't play well with these, I guess because of the bulky callback-driven interface.

>If you expect linux

I don't expect Linux. That's my point - you can't have Linux on embedded so why even bother with all the abstractions? Why bother with DTS and Kconfig when you still end with a set of header files to debug - except now they are also auto-generated unreadable mess?

> portability is incredibly smooth compared to other vendors

That's an extremely low bar.

why-o-why · 2 hours ago

Oh, kconifg is great. Do you think arduino is better? lolno. Check out NXP or STM's solution, and kconfig makes way more sense. Again, my opinion.

>> You don't allocate a separate thread stack for something you do once an hour - not unless it's a high-criticality task. You don't constantly poll a sensor that consumes 10mA on a device that has 10µA idle consumption budget.

I know. But you said you were TRYING to do that. You invent a scenario then you explain why it is wrong.

I don't like to argue for the sake of arguing. Peace out.

why-o-why commented on Arduino UNO Q bridges high-performance computing with real-time control arduino.cc/product-uno-q/... · Posted by u/doener

LarsKrimi · 6 hours ago

Zephyr is a baby project. From the embedded devs I know they have only started seriously considering Zephyr in the last 2-3 years for commercial projects.

And you may call it inertia sure, but in the mid 2000's everyone was doing their own hardware abstraction. You had to get books and stuff because documentation sucked. MCU vendors seemingly made a point of making especially stuff like ADCs and timers very hard to abstract away between vendors.

Back then you had a choice of GCC/IAR/KEIL/CCS/Codwarrior and probably more. Each worse and less standards-compliant than the next, except for GCC/avr-gcc as was the key enabler of Arduino

All that text to say: The situation was different, and Arduino showed that there's a wider unmet demand for custom embedded stuff and that people will sacrifice a bit of performance for something that's easy to develop

why-o-why · 5 hours ago

>> Zephyr is a baby project

Most white box appliance makers use zephyr, so do some popular Wifi camera systems, and every major embedded SOC/MCU maker supports it. If that's a baby project, why don't you tell me what a "mature" project is?

why-o-why commented on Arduino UNO Q bridges high-performance computing with real-time control arduino.cc/product-uno-q/... · Posted by u/doener

tliltocatl · 6 hours ago

> Zephyr blows away Arduino

Zephyr is basically "let's have the nice things from Linux on small MCUs" and it sucks. Yes, it is numbers of magnitude better than vendor-specific not-quite-RTOS crap. It blows away Arduino because Arduino is an educational environment just a step above Scratch. Zephyr still sucks. And there is no hope of fixing it because it doesn't suck because the authors did a bad job. They did a fantastic job and it still sucks because the approach fundamentally doesn't work.

Zephyr loves to reuse Linux tooling but it simply doesn't fit. Kconfig silently disabling options because of missing dependencies sucks. No, I'm not using menuconfig, thank you very much, navigating a million of menus is the last thing I need. DTS to C macros abomination sucks. Tons of CMake scripts scattered over every directory suck.

The build in-drivers? What is implemented and tested directly by SoC vendors works, the rest is unusable for anything but example project. Want to use an external SPI flash? Too bad the driver doesn't implement any power management, program it all yourself or accept a constant 12mA draw (fine for many projects, absolutely unacceptable for some). Want to read this I2C sensor once an hour? Too bad, the build-in driver can only poll it constantly in a dedicated thread, just write one yourself. Not like that's a big job, but the build-in driver would be infinitely more useful if it just defined the register map in a header.

And worse yet, Zephyr doesn't do anything to actually solve the silicon lock-in problem, because it's not something that can be solved by new abstractions. Peripheral interconnect, interval timers and basically any peripheral that isn't I2C or UART is simply impossible to abstract over in a useful way. There is no common denominator like there is on desktop.

IMHO, FreeRTOS is a much better system simply because it doesn't tries to be a HAL. It switches between threads and that's it. And HAL for MCUs is simply a pipedream. If you can afford a HAL, go with Linux on a SoC large enough for that.

why-o-why · 5 hours ago

>> Zephyr loves to reuse Linux tooling but it simply doesn't fit.

What? It has its own tooling.

>> What is implemented and tested directly by SoC vendors works,

Yes, that's the point.

>> And HAL for MCUs is simply a pipedream.

Huh? What does this even mean?

>> Want to read this I2C sensor once an hour? Too bad, the build-in driver can only poll it constantly in a dedicated thread

That's literally how it an RTOS works. I'm baffled by your complaint. It sounds like you just don't understand embedded programming.

>> There is no common denominator like there is on desktop.

Ah ok, there we go: found the problem. If you expect linux, then of course you'll miss all of the embedded patterns that Zephyr solves cross-platform.

Their HAL works, their stacks work, the portability is incredibly smooth compared to other vendors. I just disagree with everything you've said in my experience using it, and working with companies that use it.

why-o-why commented on Arduino UNO Q bridges high-performance computing with real-time control arduino.cc/product-uno-q/... · Posted by u/doener

LarsKrimi · 7 hours ago

As someone else said in the previous thread when it was announced: it's about the software first. Qualcomm likely doesn't get this and likely never will

Writing traditional MCU software without an RTOS always sucked for a multitude of reasons. Vendor lockin, expensive specialty compilers, and so on

Arduino showed that it could be done differently with some not too expensive abstractions. Sure it is looked down on by traditional embedded engineers but the productivity gains and accessibility was hard to argue against

ESP didn't (only) grow huge because the hardware was cheap and available. The integration in the Arduino ecosystem was done brilliantly. It truly felt like a natural citizen in between usual Arduino code

why-o-why · 7 hours ago

What do you mean "vendor lock in"? Developers become accustomed to a particular SDK, and it is hard to move to new silicon because you need to relearn where the peripherals differ. If that's what you mean, I don't consider that lock-in, just inertia, but by your definition the Arduino SDK is "vendor lock in" (for all but the most trivial code it is portable). ESP32 integration with Arduino's ecosystem is severely limited to just a handful of APIs, and you need to use the ESP32 function calls if you want to do anything sophisticated (and idf.py). The Arduino API is too topical. I know from experience. Zephyr blows away Arduino, it has portable stacks, security, update, wifi/ble, etc...

Also, near everyone is offering GCC/LLVM/IAR/ARMCC (except for Synopsys ARC and Renesas RX).

why-o-why commented on Ask HN: Who here is not working on web apps/server code? · Posted by u/ex-aws-dude

why-o-why · a day ago

Private chef here.

why-o-why commented on Is Proton leaving Switzerland? techradar.com/vpn/vpn-pri... · Posted by u/_tk_

iagooar · a day ago

They leave for Germany, of all places. Germany is one of the European states with most arrests for posting entries on social media. I guess they will pack their stuff and move on in 1-2 years from now.

why-o-why · a day ago

What were those posts about on social media? Care to share?

why-o-why commented on How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips japantimes.co.jp/business... · Posted by u/artninja1988

tgv · 2 days ago

There's a whole regiment of immigrants who worked on the Manhattan project, as we all know. We also know that the USSR obtained much of their knowledge on how to build the bomb through espionage.

why-o-why · a day ago

Espionage? Gasp. The US would never do that to get ahead. I'm so suspicious of claims without external sources of provenance about American exceptionalism during the cold war that I take all if it with a large grain of salt. Back then, everything Russia said was propaganda, and everything the US said was truth from the mouth of god.

why-o-why commented on History LLMs: Models trained exclusively on pre-1913 texts github.com/DGoettlich/his... · Posted by u/iamwil

zoky · 2 days ago

I mean, you gotta read it. I’m not normally a huge fan of the classics; I find Steinbeck dry and tedious, and Hemingway to be self-indulgent and repetitious. Even Twain’s other work isn’t exactly to my taste. But I’ve read Huckleberry Finn three times—in elementary school just for fun, in high school because it was assigned, and I recently listened to it on audiobook—and enjoyed the hell out of each time. Banning it simply because it uses a word that the entire book simply couldn’t exist without is a crime, and does a huge disservice to the very students they are supposedly trying to protect.

why-o-why · a day ago

I have read it. I spent my 20s guiltily reading all of the books I was supposed to have read in high school but used Cliff's Notes instead. From my 20's perspective I found Finn insipid and hokey but that's because pop culture had recycled it hundreds of times since its first publication, however when I consider it from the period perspective I can see the satire and the pointed allegories that made Twain so formidable. (Funny you mention Hemingway. I loved his writing in my 20's, then went back and read some again in my 40's and was like "huh, this irritating and immature, no wonder i loved it in my 20's.")

why-o-why commented on How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips japantimes.co.jp/business... · Posted by u/artninja1988

makeitdouble · 2 days ago

They have high security, and obfuscating the premises is part of it, but is it really secret in any way ? I mean, we're knowing exactly what they're aiming for and could compare notes at the end of it.

Is it war ? in a "everything is a war" political sense, perhaps, but not in any other sense.

We're left with "massive project" for the analogy, that's kinda weak really.

why-o-why · 2 days ago

>> is it a war?

people love to be reductionist... i wonder what aspects of a culture make everyone so black/white us/them ingroup/outgroup. Is it particular to the US, or like, is France the same way? Or Ghana? Or is it just human that everything is a war? Naqoyqattsi.