[Vm-dev] Re: [squeak-dev] MQTT for Squeak?

Ben Coman btc at openinworld.com
Sun Oct 30 13:26:26 UTC 2016


On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 6:37 AM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
> And now I have my ESP8266 with DHT22 temp/humidity sensor publishing ok. Arduino c++ is really quite an amazingly unpleasant language. We need Smalltalk on these things!

How small could we conceivably make the VM to fit on one of these...?
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Products/Compare

For example the Mega...
MCU: 8-bit 16 MHz AVR
EEPROM:  4kB
RAM:         8kB
FLASH:      256kB

Current vm build product sizes...
4.1M   phcogspurlinuxht/lib/.../pharo
4.8M   sqcogspurlinuxht/lib/.../squeak
3.9M   sqstkspurlinuxht/lib/.../squeak
1.2M   sqstkspurlinuxhtminimal/lib/.../

That last one built without any internal nor external plugins.
What areas might be attacked to feasibly improve on that, to the point
it can meet rising hardware specs?

The 8 bit-ness is probably a killer though (??)

Maybe it would be better to port the VM to the ESP32...
MCU:  32-bit 240 Mhz Tensilica Xtensa LX6
ROM:  448 KBytes for booting and core functions
RAM:  520 KBytes
FLASH: 4MB (per retail boards - 4 x 16 MBytes supported)
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13907
https://www.adafruit.com/products/3269
https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/product-files/3269/esp32_datasheet_en_0.pdf

Those specs look like they are getting close enough to consider possibility.
How small might an extremely minimal image be that just toggles an LED?

Hmmm.... I wonder where we might find someone both familiar with the
MCU and positively inclined to Smalltalk?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensilica


Some general ESP32 info...
http://hackaday.com/2016/10/04/how-to-get-started-with-the-esp32/
http://hackaday.com/2016/09/15/esp32-hands-on-awesome-promise/
http://esp32.net/

cheers -ben




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