linux Erlang/OTP status (gumstix)

[Marthin Laubscher]

Pascal Brisset writes:
> 
> It's strange to read about the gumstix here. For a moment I thought
> I had my mailing-list folders all mixed-up.

I did extensive searches in both mailing lists without finding any gumstix
in the erlang world and no erlang in the gumstix world. So yes, as strange
as it was for you, so strange and exciting it was to me to hear of another
that's walked the road I thought I had to pioneer.

Based purely on what should be, and not (yet) on experience, I expect the
gumstix and erlang to be a very good combination. Small, lightweight, low
power enough for mobile and embedded applications, with the robustness and
network distributed power of erlang. It remains to be seen if the concept
works as well in practice as in theory, but so far it's actually looking
good.

<snip>

> I happened to have the cross-development environment already compiled,
> and it only took a couple hours to get R10B-8 running, following your
> notes at http://www.corelatus.com/~matthias/erlang_on_860.html .

Did you use the same cross-compiling environment to build erlang as
suggested by gumstix for development and build-root purposes, or did you set
up something different?

> 
> It takes 70 seconds to start erl over NFS and Bluetooth, but then
> the shell feels very responsive.

<snip - although the "proof" of erlang running on gumstix was a sight for
sore eyes indeed>
 
> The hardware is a gumstix basix 200f-bt (80mm x 20mm, 8 g, 1 W):

I'm awaiting my gumstix connex 400xm-bt with netCF and a robostix. It should
be fun. I suspect NFS via Bluetooth was the biggest reason for the 70
seconds, and that loading it from MMC should make a huge difference there.

> 
> My build script and binaries are temporarily here, in case someone
> wants to have a look:
> http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.brisset/tmp/gumstix-erlang/compile.sh
> http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.brisset/tmp/gumstix-
> erlang/gumstix_lib_erlang_erts-5.4.10_bin.tgz

Ta, I'll most definitely be having a look-see, probably a use-smile :-)

> 
> -- Pascal
> 
Some Q's if you please.

Are you using the gumstix erlang in a project, or was it just experimental
fun?

Are you using any of the GPIOs on the gumstix from Erlang?

Did you do any work on HiPE for the port?

Have you tried to cluster gumstix-based nodes? With any success?

Beyond shell responsiveness, do you have any feedback on the performance of
Erlang on the 200MHz PXA250(?) in applications, compared for example to a
200MHz x86.

Marthin Laubscher