[wplug] re: Webtv hacks?

Kenneth Hunt kenneth.hunt.b at bayer.com
Fri Mar 8 13:20:25 EST 2002


This looks interesting in the MIPS processor arena.

Kenneth


>>
http://rome.sourceforge.net/index.shtml

What is ROME?
ROME is a lightweight, modular, multitasking, embedded operating system 
which has been developed and used for multiple research projects within 
the Computer & Communications Research Laboratory (CCRL) of NEC USA, Inc. 
in Princeton, NJ. 

Why is ROME useful?
ROME was designed to manage high speed data streams within a multimedia 
environment. The system is highly modular, with functionality split 
between multiple processes. To ensure a high throughput with minimal 
overhead ROME provides a zero copy architecture where pointer references 
to data are passed around instead of data being copied. The goal of this 
approach is to maximize the utilization of a given hardware configuration. 


Also, the memory footprint of a ROME system can be extremely small. For 
example, the image file of a MIPS based minimal demo system with 3 running 
processes was smaller than 16KB. This makes ROME suitable for really 
deeply embedded applications. 

Where does ROME run?
ROME is as platform independent as possible - only a few lines of ROME 
code are written in assembler, for example parts of the CPU dependent 
plug-ins. Currently the following processor types are supported: 

Intel x86 series 
Intel i960 series 
MIPS r4000 series 
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