Herbert Graf wrote:
>         I agree that SBCs are meant for those environments, I agree
> that they ARE used for those environments, however I disagree that they
> SHOULD be used for those environments.

Then what environments do you think they should be used in, or do you
think they shouldn't exist at all?

> Call it personal opinion, but a Pentium is not something
> I want controlling my car.

I'm looking for a good reason here else this is just a bunch of pointless
hot air.

> it's [the Pentium's] architecture has to be "worked around" to be
> used for real time control.

That's blatant nonsense!  What exactly about the Pentium architecture do
you think makes it unsuitable for real time control?  I think a Pentium
can be very effective in that role, and I've used it that way with good
success.

> Again, SBCs are EASY, but that doesn't mean they SHOULD be used, at
> least not in my eyes.

Then provide some genuine arguments to make your point other than you just
don't like them because.

Surely you must admit that some industrial control problems require more
compute power than a simple microcontroller can provide, and more like
what a Pentium-class processor can provide.  So what do you do in such a
case?  You could chose from any number of high end processors like the
Power PC, Pentium, ARM, etc, etc.  Some of these will be better fits in
particular circumstances.  For example, some variants of the Power PC are
particularly well suited for communication applications due to built in
hardware support, some ARM variants specialize in low power/MIP, etc.  But
if you just need general compute power, most of these will do fine.  You
could start with one of these processors, learn its interface details,
design your own RAM, flash, or disk subsystem, and debug everything
yourself.  Sometimes that may be the right answer when volumes are high
and it's worth extra engineering effort and risk to get the tightest
possible fit.

However, for many such industrial applications the total processor system
is a small part of the overall cost, or time to market may be important.
In that case the make versus buy tradeoff leans more toward buy.  That's
where the single board computers come in.  Most of these use Pentiums and
mimic the PC architecure because it is general purpose and has the most
existing software and development environment support.

So Herbert, what specifically do you find at fault with this reasoning?


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