On Sep 11, 2009, at 1:27 PM, dawydiuk wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Their seems to be quite a bit of buzz around Android recently. As a
> result we've kicked around the idea of porting Android to one of our
> boards, but it's difficult to know if our customers would have any
> interest in Android. I think the general consensus at TS regarding
> Android is it would be good from a marketing standpoint, but not
> necessarily from an engineering standpoint. Although, I'm really
> curios to know if we are on the same page as our customers.
>
> To my understanding the major benefit of Android is it raises the
> level of abstraction of the hardware by providing a Java API. That
> is TS would have to write JNI routines for all custom hardware. This
> higher level of abstraction may be good from a productivity
> standpoint, although the higher level of abstraction is also a
> negative(e.g. undeterministic garbage collection, more resources
> required...).
>
> We'd be interested to here what everyone thinks...?
Android is not currently something we are looking to run on TS boards.
Having a relatively current/stable EABI kernel to use within both the
TS "fastboot" environment and a full EABI Debian distribution is what
we like about the TS boards. Our usage is primarily for embedded
control systems and robotics. The ability to strip down a system and
write kernel modules to support new hardware and algorithms with tight
timing loops while also taking advantage of Linux's robust concurrency
and network stack is what we like most about TS boards. I've always
felt the TS "sweet spot" was serving the middle-ground between MCU
development and traditional SBC development with full blown operating
systems. Perhaps an Android-based product is worth the effort to serve
a different niche, however, don't ditch the current market being
served. For the record, we use the 7300, 7800, and are very much
looking forward to the release of the 7550.
Thanks for keeping us abreast of what you all are kicking around
internally.
Thanks,
Tom.
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