Advanced Chips to run an operating system such as FreeBSD

[bryan1]

G'day Guy's,
After a good chat with a mate about running 'squid' I'm wondering if any of these arm chips or any other chips are capable of running FreeBSD. I do feel if this is possible lets make this project open source and Bill's pic32 thread could pail into insignificance.

Regards Bryan

 

[be80be]

Arm9 would be good **broken link removed**

Here a link http://wiki.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/arm/OMAP

 

[blueroomelectronics]

I'm listening.

My project is not a Linux box but instead more like this.

The "device" I'm working on is more an autonomous bridge / peripheral than a fancy user interface with mass storage. I'm thinking along the lines of your master controller can be almost anything with a internet connection, processing power and storage. I also envision this master controller could even be in the cloud (IMHO this is the future, just like online shopping and banking). The "device" I'm building will have a more spartan interface, limited processing power and storage but plenty of I/O.

An inexpensive Linux based controller would be a welcome addition, here's the rub. PogoPlug's (Linux based NAS) go on sale all the time for $69, although it's a little slow as a NAS it's some cheap hardware and would be hard to beat cost wise as a DIY product. It's also I/O poor as are most NAS. I guess what I'm putting together with the MX32 would be a NAC.

 

[be80be]

The pic32 can run it to FreeBSD/mips - FreeBSD Wiki

It's a mips chip and there a port for them

 

[blueroomelectronics]

Certainly a possibility, but's it very limited in pretty much everything by Linux standards. On the other hand it's almost overkill as an I/O bridge / controller. You don't need many MIPs to turn on a light or two...

 

[Mosaic]

Hmmm...perhaps placing a ARM CPU IP core & HDD controller core (& optional GPU core) into an FPGA which can also handle any glue logic and USB & other I/O would deliver the MIPS u want.

 

[bryan1]

Guy's as my mate said linux and FreeBSD are two different things, be80be showed a chip that might handle it but the real Q here is are you guys prepared to throw up source code for the benefit of the forum.?? The Question I did ask is are the members of this forum are prepared to make this an open source project.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

Well I'm doing the hardware layout for the 32MX board. I'm not familiar with FreeBSD I'll look at it though.

What is the advantage of FreeBSD vs Linux?

 

[be80be]

What chip arm or pic Pic would be nice but the arm9 is a speed house 1ghz

What is the advantage of FreeBSD vs Linux?

FreeBSD has much less bloat then Linux. FreeBSD would probably run real fast on the pic32