Re: Ada 95 for an ARM-based bare board?

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

Robert Dewar wrote:

> Dmitry A.Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message
> news:<ajt1ae$1ebok8$1@ID-77047.news.dfncis.de>...

>> Yes, it looked to me as if neither you nor other vendors are convinced
>> that
>> [strange] ARM platform will have any considerable success. Your answer
>> shows that it is true, at least in case of ACT. Exactly this is strange
>> from my perspective. There are lots of Ada ports for PowerPC, there is
>> one even for a radiation-hardened something (:-)). And there is no one
>> for ARM. At the same time no less than 80% of the customers we are
>> dealing with, are using or are planing to use ARM.
> 
> We are not in the guessing game, and also not in the business of
> believing those who say without hard evidence that platform xxx will be
> important for Ada.

[How somebody could have a "hard evidence" that something will be?  (:-))] 
Anyway to be important /= to be important to Ada. AFAIK, ARM is already 
important. A minimal requirement for making it important for Ada is to have 
a compiler for it.

> It's quite simple, if we have some real customers who are
> seriously interested, then a port will appear. There is some sign that
> this may happen for the ARM, but nothing definite enough to announce yet 
> :-)
> 
>> Yes of course. However note that almost none of our customers will ever
>> show any interest. They know nothing about Ada and even less about ACT.
> 
> OK, so your customers are indeed irrelevant to us. And therefore what
> they do or do not plan to do is not significant. Yes, sure I know there
> are those who say "you should make a port for xxx, maybe that will
> generate interest".

No. Even so, these customers would not come! Ada should come to them. They 
will use C, C#, Java whatever but Ada. It is a really hard work to get 
them. Yes they are irrelevant in the sense that you cann't get them with no 
effort. Maybe an exaggeration, but remember how DEC considered home users 
irrelevant. Where is DEC now?

> Well that kind of speculation is not for us, but the nice thing about
> an open technology like GNAT is that if someone thinks that, and is
> confident that Ada Core Technologies is missing the boat, then there is
> nothing stopping anyone from building the missing port :-)

Unfortunately it is not an option in our case. We simply have not enough 
resources for that.

>> I can undestand that Java platform is not so damn promising to support
>> JGNAT. But just out of curiosity, does ACT really believe that ARM will
>> never ever used as an embedded platform? What is ACT expectance of
>> sharing the embedded market between PowerPC, x86 and ARM? X:Y:0?
> 
> The embedded market in general does not necessarily reflect likely Ada
> usage.

True, but should not it? From my point of view it could be a very good time 
for Ada there. People are starting to use multitasking, wireless 
communication etc in their embedded systems. To have a 32-bit controller is 
no more cosidered too expensive. Shouldn't we use this situation?

> Right now, most embedded Ada work is either on the power PC or the 68K
> with some limited amount of x86 work.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de