[Info-vax] Viability of VMS in the embedded world ?, was: Re: OpenVMS x64 Atom project

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-06-01, John Dallman <jgd at cix.co.uk> wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H6AJigJnNs
>
> Running VMS on small systems for "edge computing," which is given the
> clearest explanation I've encountered for that term. 
>
> John 

Does anyone really think that this is a viable market for VMS ?

How many times more expensive than the US$300 board will VMS be
to run on that board in a commercial environment ?

Why would someone learn VMS for this instead of just using an
established bare metal or RTOS alternative ?

Will you need to renew the VMS licence every year to keep your
embedded application running ?

This is exactly the kind of application use that VAXELN was designed
for a generation ago (ie: VMS didn't cut it even back then) and for
which multiple well-established dedicated RTOS options exist these days
if you need something larger than a bare metal program.

This is an example of the kind of thing that's available for free these days:

https://www.rtems.org/

An example of a technical issue:

If you are doing GPIO operations then you need a dedicated RTOS or
bare metal program which then talks to a larger system unless you
are doing something with very low bandwidth that can tolerate a high
degree of jitter.

What kind of jitter are you going to see if you try driving the GPIO
pins directly from VMS ?

Even ignoring jitter, then at what kind of rate will you be able
to drive the GPIO pins directly from VMS ?

You will not be doing hard realtime with this setup.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.