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Run Erlang/Elixir on Microcontrollers and Embedded Linux

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206 points weatherlight | 1 comments | 02 Sep 25 08:40 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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rkangel ◴[02 Sep 25 11:50 UTC] No.45101850[source]▶
> MCU-class footprint (fits in 16 MB RAM)

That is absolutely not an MCU class footprint. Anything with an "M" when talking about memory isn't really an MCU. For evidence I cite the ST page on all their micros: https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32...

Only the very very high performance ones are >1MB of RAM.

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jdndnc ◴[02 Sep 25 12:05 UTC] No.45101994[source]▶
RAM on MCUs is getting cheaper by the minute.

A couple of years ago it was measured in bytes. Before the RP2040 is was measured in dozens of KiB now it's measured in MiB

While I agree that 16 MiB is on the larger side for now, it will only be a couple of years for mainstream MCUs having that amount on board

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pessimizer ◴[02 Sep 25 14:41 UTC] No.45103749[source]▶
Bigger processors with more RAM have always been available. The question has always been whether you're going to use a $20 processor when you could do the job with a 50¢ one. It's the difference between your product being cheap and disposable, and you getting to choose your margin based on your strategy; and not being able to move a unit without losing money, hoping to sell yourself to someone who knows how to do more with less.

I'm an Erlang fanatic, and have been since forever, paid for classes when it was Erlang Training & Consulting at the center of things, flew cross-country to take them, have the t-shirt, hosted Erlang meetups myself in downtown Chicago. I'm not prototyping a microcontroller application in Erlang if I can get it done any other way. It's committing to losing from the outset.

edit: I've always been hopeful for some bare-metal implementation that would at least almost work for cheap µcs, and there have been promising attempts in the past, but they seem to have gone nowhere.

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1. toast0 ◴[02 Sep 25 17:16 UTC] No.45106048[source]▶
AtomVM runs on esp32, right? It's not an ultra-cheap microcontroller, but it's pretty cheap. AtomVM isn't BEAM either, though. I have no experience with AtomVM though... it didn't seem like a good fit when I was building something with an ESP32 (I didn't see anything about outputting to LCDs, and that was reasonable with arduino libraries... I also saw a library for calendars and thought that would work for my needs and then I got dragged into making it work better), and it would have worked for the stuff i was doing with ESP8266, but I didn't know about it when I was shopping for boards, so I didn't want to pay extra.