So, I suppose it all depends on what you're looking to do. In small quantities, a minimum parts BOM that will run a standard build of Pike will probably be $20. The lesser ARM components that have the horsepower to run Pike but are incapable of running a full OS would probably run about half that.
The really affordable MCUs, such as AVRs and PICs, are probably just too slow to be useful.
In the case of micropython, I suspect that the micropython interpreter is the firmware flashed to the MCU and that they're using some sort of flash card to store the libraries and script to run, which sort of defeats my vision of a simple (from part/circuit complexity) solution. I'm not sure that there's much way around that, though, because the master alone is bigger than the total flash available for a lot of MCUs.
Still, I think it's an interesting idea. Maybe a very early version of ulpc might be a good starting point...
On Wed, 7 May 2014, Stephen R. van den Berg wrote:
Bill Welliver wrote:
C but without memory management and with better types. But really, most true MCUs are so space constrained that I'm not sure it's worth the effort (which I suppose perhaps depends on the goal).
I have to admit though, that the most cost-effective embedded systems have something the size of 8 to 128KB of flash, and 4 to 32KB of RAM, which in reality is too small to run Pike (I'm guessing though). So maybe you're right, and the highest volume target market is out of reach. Then again, MCU capacities are slowly rising and costs are coming down, so there is going to be a point in time where it will make sense. -- Stephen.