[squeak-dev] Raspberry Pi (was: Squeak Community Hangout - some notes)

Open Slate openslateproj at gmail.com
Thu Nov 8 22:29:13 UTC 2012


On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 2:11 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>wrote:

> On 2012-11-07, at 22:39, Open Slate <openslateproj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I just saw where the FreeBSD foundation has awarded a grant to have the
> OS ported to the Genesi Efika MX Smartbook portable computer. I would like
> to get Squeak running on this platform. Also looking at their MX53 as the
> core of a self-made project. I am concerned that the hardware is
> underpowered, 800MHz Freescale i.MX515 CPU and 512MB RAM. I see where the
> new OLPC uses 1GB RAM. If we assume that the FreeBSD port will be on par
> with the available Linux OS in terms of RAM requirements and performance,
> is this enough juice to provide an acceptable level of performance in
> Squeak?
>
> The RPi has only 256 MB of RAM and Squeak runs fine under Linux (they do
> not use GNOME or KDE but a less memory-hungry environment, LXDE).
>
> The main problem is display speed. Since the display has lots of pixels,
> and Morphic isn't exactly frugal about screen updates, we end up copying a
> ton of pixel data around.
>
> > How difficult would it be to port the existing FreeBSD vm, which is
> Intel based, to the Freescale CPU? (
> http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX515)
>
> Should Just Work.
>
> - Bert -
>
>
>
>
Yeah, I've given up on Gnome. Currently using Enlightenment on my desktop
but that would not be good on a tablet. Sounds like Squeak has not become
blotted as hardware specs expanded. That's good.

Why would the port "just work?" Does the Freescale chip execute i86
instruction set? (I feel like I am in over my head here.) My thinking is
that the ARM chip will require its own vm, then an image will "just work."

-- 
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
http://openslate.org/
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