[sdiy] Daft Idea, LINUX SYNTH

[Magnus Danielson]

From: Jim Patchell <patchell at silcom.com>
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Daft Idea, LINUX SYNTH
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2001 13:00:23 -0800

>    3.  The software (code) part, at least, is pretty easy.  If fact, 
> that is probably the reason why Linux is a success.  The one problem I 
> see however is that a processor will need to be chosen for the code to 
> run on.  Because of the differences between processors, and the level at 
> which the code must be written, it is going to be very difficult to make 
> the code both portable and efficient on all processors.  And, I would 
> imagine that there will be 600 different choices of which micro would be 
> the best to use.

No. This is the common misstake in DIY projects!

We shall not choose processor!

If you have a processor which is sufficiently well supported by GCC,
then you must use very uncommon stuff to actually beat the GCC. I've
done the exercise and compared my assembler code to that of GCC for
the same inner loop thing and GCC did a few tricks more than I did,
and then I pulled quite a few (it was on a MIPS 4600 and pipeline
scheduling was a natural optimisation).

It is an all to common misstake to choose processor and write
everything too tailored to it, that makes it much more difficult to
move stuff when needs aries. Also, the actual gain you acheive by
writing specifically for a micro is usually not that big where I often
see people make mega-faults in how their code works as such.

Also, the other side is that the first thing that pops out when one
says "some micro" is that there is a huge fight about which micro is
the best. It's so ridiculous!

No, if you are going to pick Linux then you better learn the lesson
from Linux and that includes to avoid writing specifically for some
system except for the device drivers.

Just saying that one pick Linux as an OS is controversial, but I am
all for it even if it cuts out the lower end of the processor-choice
scale, but I do not necessarilly think that is bad.

Personally I use the Debian distribution and no of those messy
commercial distributions.

The software side leaves many interesting (that is the engineering
term for booring, unexamined and/or troublesome) problems and
questions and I wonder if people here really want to see all those
discussions.

Cheers,
Magnus