Marvell microkernel replacement

[Albert Cahalan]

On Jan 13, 2008 6:42 AM, David Woodhouse <dwmw2 at infradead.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-01-13 at 02:30 -0500, Albert Cahalan wrote:
> > David Woodhouse writes:
> >
> > > http://www.csr.com/products/unifirange.htm
> >
> > They claim that that is a 1-chip solution. Is it really?
>
> I have no reason to believe otherwise -- why do you ask?

There have been claims that Marvell's solution is especially
well-suited to the XO because it includes a processor.
I can still count the chips though, and Marvell is using 2.
That makes them no better than a 1-chip solution without
a processor, because one can just add a processor to a
softmac 1-chip solution.

I am glad that the Marvell stuff is on USB, where it can
not DMA right over the kernel. :-)

> Fewer chips is generally better. If we could put the _whole_ thing on
> one die -- the kind of thing IBM are really good at doing for their
> customers -- then that would be ideal. I don't think we're quite going
> to manage _that_ level of integration, but we could certainly do better
> than we have in the current XO design.

Being a tad less aggressive: CaFE, D-CON, and a PPC4xx
to turn a softmac wireless chip into fullmac.