Re: Point a beginner in the right direction? Cheap bare-board to run with a RTOS for running ADA

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Mon, 08 Jul 2013 15:15:31 +0200, G.B. wrote:

> If a household device is sold at $$ - $$$, how could a
> microcontroller with a few pieces added be as expensive
> as you say? I can buy an electronic scale at $$; how so,
> if embedded boards cost much more than that as you say?

Because people are prepared to pay the price. The theory is (don't know how
true it is). When you are not a vendor of embedded devices yourself (in
which case you are also the board designer), then you buy 1-10 boards to be
used in a system worth of dozens of Kbucks. You do not care whether the
board is 50 or 500 bucks. Especially because one working hour of your
engineers is more than 50 bucks.

> A small(!) battery charger with an Atom processor in it?

I read somewhere about a technology that distributes tiny chargers all
around microchips. Maybe there will be no battery chargers someday.

>>> If Ada vendors wish to loose all but the market for expensive high
>>> end systems, then that's their choice.
>>
>> It is not their choice. It is the board vendors who determine what is in
>> the BSP. No Ada vendor has the resources to port it on every possible
>> board.
> 
> Port what?  People have asked for good compile-time support
> with some minimal run-time support. The meaning of "minimal"
> not being "full Ada".

When they start pulling things together the result would be pretty much
full Ada and beyond it, e.g. OS services. My point merely was that a really
minimal RTL is likely useless for most people interested in embedded and
Ada.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de