this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2024
235 points (96.8% liked)

linuxmemes

21143 readers
1508 users here now

Hint: :q!


Sister communities:


Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack members of the community for any reason.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
  • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
  • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.

  • Please report posts and comments that break these rules!

    founded 1 year ago
    MODERATORS
     
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

    Those are still CPUs. Microcontrollers have CPUs, and those are the smallest units that can actually run code in a meaningful way.

    If the whole board is the CPU, we typically don't call it a CPU. (The C is for Central.) There's very few left, but there's still hardware out there, running code, that could be called CPU-less.

    I do take your point that it's down to pendantic wording, at that point. Something very like a CPU, that most of us are going to just call a CPU, is going to be present.

    However, Linux needs an MMU as far as I know, so you won't see Ubuntu boot on an esp32, even though it does have a CPU.

    Yeah. There's certainly an argument to be made that whatever is left is not really the Linux Kernel anymore, after modifying it enough to run CPU-free. But I suppose it's still more fair to call it Linux, than not to, at that point.

    [โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

    Microcontrollers aren't "the whole board", following that definition, an SoC wouldn't have a CPU either.

    MCs require support components. Clocks, power converters, level shifters, modem, etc. You'll hardly wire a barrel plug and a servo directly to a DIP (though that would be pretty cool).