The title is more of a gag on the other parodied State of the Union addresses, like State of the Onion by Perl Developer Larry Wall: https://www.perl.com/pub/2006/09/21/onion.html/
Stateless applications, or even machines, may involve some amount of storage, even if it is not local. The purpose of stateless systems may have diverged with increasing options/capabilities, but its adoption in embedded systems can still have a lot of utility.
https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/cloud-native-apps/stateful-vs-stateless
A stateless application may comprise only one part of a lightweight system, whereas the rest of the kernel and OS might have stateful applications.
What about Stateless OSes?
Depending on the need, such as a LiveCD/USB, a stateless OS isn't going to save info on ROM, but it can serve a useful purpose such as on PuppyLinux, which boots into RAM and allows a persistant storage option. One theory is that developing a new, lightweight system might be easier to select off-the-shelf stateless applications/modules, and interfaces, then integrate them into a single OS that limits where storage must take place.
Rather than starting from scratch, like Gentoo (which itself isn't technically from scratch), building an OS with predefined and pretested benchmarked applications can produce a list of memory requirements, and then the applications can be loaded as separate, single application OSes. This might allow bypassing higher memory needs, at the expense of a "truly" userspace OS.
Stateful Userspace, just not all at once
"The sum of the parts is less than the whole" can alternately be written as "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts." Unless multitasking and time is of essence. The tradeoff of serial applications (RISC analogy and CISC comparisons are somewhat congruent) is at the expense of time and processing needs.
Deliberately limiting IPC bandwith/memory cache and clockrate is only to meet energy constraints, not to artificially limit processing for useless reasons. Not use less, although that sounds like a joke. Get it? While there are certainly efficiency cases where clock rate improves throughput, there are many edge/niche cases where that may not apply.
The purpose of solar femtoTX motherboard and Solar Kernel is to explore those edge cases.
Another Four Core A53... in 2025?
Just 2 months ago, Qualcomm, one of the wealthiest chipmakers in the world, just behind Apple, Nvidia, and Intel (historically), with a market capitalization of $188 Billion, decided to release yet another Quad Core Single Board Computer, to win perhaps a 10-15% share of the Single Board Computer Market.
My guess is that someone in the product development meeting at Qualcomm had this idea:
Developer Jerry: "Hey, let's take on Raspberry Pi!"
Manager Tom: That's a great idea! We've got the cash! SEO assistant, let's get on the first page of Google Search results.
Developer Berry (SEO Whiz): Sure thing! On it.
Developer Jerry: We'll have the Raspberry Pi cornered in time for our 2nd quarterly results!
What I think is needed
More 16MB-128MB SoCs with Display Interfaces & GUIS and boring bootloaders - Towboot, Coreboot (for 386 and 486, etc) or kexecboot. Bootloaders that are standardized and don't require a highly proprietary or convoluted boot processes across boards, especially using the same architecture.
Memory in Pixel display controllers (present on the Ambiq Micro Apollo 510): https://contentportal.ambiq.com/documents/20123/387733/Apollo-SoC-Selector-Guide.pdf
SAM9X60 https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/MPU32/ProductDocuments/DataSheets/SAM9X60-SIP-Data-Sheet-DS60001580.pdf
Why 16-128MB? Because the era of Solar is upon us.
Today you can solar power 4MB without much of a sweat. 5 years ago you could solar power around 384KB or RAM. The Apollo 3 was released in 2020. The Apollo 510 in 2025. I'm referring to portable solar panels that can fit inside a pocket, or maybe a briefcase, not a foldout panel that is as large as a newspaper. The purpose of portable solar mobile devices is just that, as most commuters aren't setting up a camping spot in the middle of rush hour on 5th Avenue.
That's only when paired with a lightweight processor no larger than a Pentium. At 32nm or less, and at 60MHz or less. That was in 2011, but Intel never released it and that didn't include RAM. The Quark was released and even partnered with the Arduino to create the Galileo Board. But very little RAM, and it was a microcontroller for all intents and purposes (Windows IoT, not 10, or 98). Has anyone soldered 4MB low power MRAM to a standalone chip like the D2000 with 0.025W (25mW) power consumption and installed Windows 3.1? Maybe. But it was never sold separately like a loose diamond (because it's diamond, silly!). Intel knows that, but just won't admit it. Available to Intel partners for development only, and today Intel Foundry advertises its services but the Quark is not on the menu (I've tried to reach out to them multiple times but never got a response).
(Edit: 1/7/26: A correction was made to the X1000- the lowest power Lakemont Quarks were actually the "D" series Silver Butte & Mint Valley D2000, along with the Atlas Peak SE C1000 (Curie), as the Clanton based X1000 used 2.5W, which is still relatively low, but not as low as the D-series, which resembled the Claremont. The D2000's were sold (and still are, by third parties from the available remaining stock), except for the D1000. Yet so much emphasis on the Edison and Galileo boards was on underselling them as "microcontrollers" and not computers that could once display much more graphically rich user interfaces. Almost in the sense of "Use this 586 to blink LEDs!" instead of "You can run Netscape Navigator!" Or maybe that was their challenge?)
By comparison, a Cortex M4 uses around the same number or slight more than and ARM1 processor (25,000 transistors).
The 80386 had 275,000. The 486 had 1.2 million. The Pentium 3.3m. When RAM is 90% of your SBC's energy consumption, the motivation to create a low RAM board (w/ ultra low voltage and power - 0.6V-0.8V) increases.
Because then you don't need a USB port in your bill of materials to recharge/power it (unless you want to).
Millions of computer users worldwide could type on a solar powered laptop, with a solar powered keyboard by ONiO, and a board that uses a 10mW of power. Set the ceiling, and the applications will follow.
A microcontroller such as the Arduino or a Single Board computer requires access to either another PC/laptop, or a power supply. One can plug in a microcontroller to a USB or a Serial TTL interface. Boards should be standalone and require just a lightweight (low power) monitor and keyboard to run.
 |
| Remember when these could run on their own? (Some had a backup battery, but still) |
Low Power Memory makers typically sell just a few MB, at most: . https://www.sure-core.com/memory-products/ (SRAM) https://www.weebit-nano.com/ (ReRAM) I am not really sure which memory suppliers are developing for the high end (many MB), but I imagine if it's really leading edge, their partners aren't publically advertising it, esp if they are using it internally to confer or research some further competitive advantage)
When I was a kid, my uncle took me strawberry picking. The farm charged by the basket. Whatever you could fit in the basket was yours. Software development should follow that principle.
Comments
Post a Comment