FreeBSD or other BSD for no-MMU ARM processor ?

[Gary Corcoran]

Wes Peters wrote:

> On Monday 14 June 2004 12:32 pm, Gary Corcoran wrote:
> 
>>Does anyone know if there is a port of FreeBSD, or any of the
>>other BSDs (e.g. NetBSD) for that matter, which will run on an
>>ARM processor which does NOT have an MMU (Memory Management Unit)?
> 
> 
> No, and there's not likely to be one anytime soon (unless you do it).  

Thanks for the definitive reply.  We don't have enough resources for
our work as it is, so no, we're not going to do it - we need something
already available.

> NetBSD has ports for a couple of ARM920T designs, which do have an MMU.  
> (I think they've recently popped a port for the Cogent CSB337, based on the 
> Atmel chip.)
> 
> The general feeling seems to be that without an MMU and the added features 
> of memory protection it provides, the heavyweight process-oriented UNIX 
> kernel doesn't really offer much advantage over a lighter-weight solution 
> like RTEMS or eCos.  The uClinux gang disagrees with this assessment, 
> obviously, so you do have that choice as well.

Thanks for the pointers.  My boss (and our customer) has mentioned eCos,
so we'll be looking into that.  RTEMS I hadn't heard of - I'll have to check
into that too.  But since I like, and am somewhat familiar with, *BSD, I
thought I'd ask if that might be an option...

Gary