Embedded Processor/Compiler Selection

["Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." <rleif@RLEIF.COM>]

To: Marin David Condic
Senior Computer Engineer
Pratt & Whitney

From: Bob Leif, Ph.D.
Vice President Ada_Med

My suggestion is to have one of the Ada vendors host their compiler on
Windows CE, which is hosted on multiple CPUs. CE must have a common
intermediate form. You do NOT have to use any part of the Microsoft GUI or
Windowing environment. CE was designed for embedded systems and is building
market share. This way, you will not be sponsoring a special but helping to
start a viable maintained, commercial product. Amusingly, Ada code which
uses Latin 1 will have a significant advantage in code size over the other
compilers, which use 2 byte Unicode.
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You wrote:
Embedded Processor/Compiler Selection

    Our compiler/processor search team is also looking at the
    following processors:

    Coldfire
    StrongARM
    Super H - Hitachi
    RH-32

    We are interested in hearing about any sort of embedded
    development with these processors that is similar to what we are
    constructing: An engine control with a highly specialized
    computer, having hard real time and reliability constraints.

    Naturally, we are interested in any experience (and sources for
    compilers) for programming these devices in Ada. (If this turns
    out to be the right answer, we might consider paying for a port.
    But we'd have to be convinced that this was the right long-term
    processor selection.) We would be interested in hearing about
    applications that are not programmed in Ada, provided they are
    reasonably similar to our own usage - high reliability, hard real
    time, bare silicon/ground up programming.

    If you can tell us about your usage of these processors, what you
    like/dislike about them, sources for tools, price/performance,
    whatever - we would find it a big help.

    Thanks for any information you can send.

    MDC

Marin David Condic.
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