On Sunday 25 May 2003 03:22 am, Michael van der Gulik wrote:
> Jecel: are intepreted languages actually useful on embedded
> hardware. I would think that they run far too slow. I know that
> forth is used a fair amount, but I thought that embedded usually
> meant low-level C and assembly programming.

There is a wide range of embedded hardware. I've worked on embedded 
systems everywhere from 512 bytes of ROM to 5 workstation-class 
computers on a network running a single factory machine.

Cell phones typically have several processors in them, as well as 
quite a bit of RAM. Some of them are running Java internally.

There's a lot of low-end ARM chips out there that would be capable of 
running interpreted languages.

There are 8-bit processors that manage to do 75M instructions/second 
for well under $10 in single quantities. And there's still lots of 
competition in the 16-bit and cheap 32-bit processors.

There are little boards like the TINI that run interpreted Java.

A number of products are aimed at the embedded market that combine an 
8-bit processor with an interpreted language. For instance, the 
Parallax Basic Stamps do between 2000 and 12000 interpreted BASIC 
instructions per second despite the fact that they're reading their 
programs from an external serial EEPROM. You can get one of these for 
$50 in single quantities, and have your little embedded system 
running the same day you get it.

There is the WISP project (http://www.wisp-lang.org) from Martin 
McClure and Travis Griggs that is porting a version of Pocket 
Smalltalk to the 16-bit world.

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE