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ACCount39 • today at 12:36 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

That's at least a tier more advanced than mainstream.

And if by "very easy to work" you mean "just allocate a shared memory block and put a mailbox in there for the Linux userspace and the RT MCU to talk to each other", you may have inflated expectations of what an average developer using an SBC can easily do. It's "very easy" in the same way rolling your own PCBs or writing your own drivers is very easy. Seasoned developers do it without thinking twice, and then stand dumbstruck when they see entry level developers avoid that like the plague.

Not like we're lacking for the offerings. Plenty of modern SoCs have MCU-like real time cores in them - intended for low power operation, real time control, or both. Even the mainstream RPi 5 boards ship spare PIO and MCU cores - in the RP1 chip. The vendor just couldn't be bothered to document that.


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nateglims • today at 12:56 AM

What do you mean by mainstream?

There’s whole sectors of industrial and automotive using these AMP SoMs. And relative to these RPi only recently began providing options that you could design into an embedded product at all. Their FAE and supply presence is way behind.

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