For 3 years, my Mac has been very, very, very (and I mean very, very, very) sluggish.
Typing on the keyboard would give me approximately 1 character per second.
Sometimes I even had to resort to using my laptop, because it was so painfully slow.
This changed recently. Not by changing to a different computer, not by re-installing the operating system (which I tried a few times, but it did not help).
-But why did it happen then ?
Well, it all started a few days ago, my ISP shut down my internet connection for maintenance. My Mac froze completely, because I had mounted a network drive, and it suddenly disappeared while I had documents open.
I could not open my programming IDE, because it remembers what files i had open in the project last time, and it kept trying to open those files that were not accessible.
After having my internet connection back a few hours later, I decided to look at my DNS setup in my D-Link DIR-655 router.
So I thought: "Something is called 'Advanced DNS', it's disabled, might be a good idea to set up some local DNS; how do I enable it ?"
I started searching for "DIR 655 Advanced DNS" and after reading about it a little, I decided that it might not be just yet.
But I did notice that D-Link had a firmware upgrade available for my router.
I decided to upgrade my firmware, because the changelog said something about a "DNS fix".
After doing so, my PowerMac has been running like if it was brand new.
So this is a practical example on why it is a good idea to use an ARM based microcontroller in a device, for instance a router:
If there is an error, you can fix it and provide firmware upgrades easily.
Of course, it's possible with other microcontrollers as well, but if you use ARM, it's even easier, because there are plenty of different MCU vendors, thus there are plenty of example-code, because each vendor provides example code for how to do things, and there's usually at least one Linux distribution available for each Cortex-A (sometimes also for Cortex-M) MCU out there.
And since there are so many Linux distributions available, there are solutions available for most problems that have been through the times.
Firmware upgrade saves you money, because you don't have to have 200 people working in your support department, in order to service your customers. The customers nowadays often have internet and can download firmware upgrades and upgrade their products themselves, and it can be done safely, without the fear of the device never working again, if it was turned off during an upgrade.
If you plan on implementing a firmware upgrade feature for your device, I Recommend reading: Bootloader Design for MCU's in Embedded Systems by jacobbeningo. This excellent document gives you insight in how a bootloader works, which can support firmware upgrade and how to implement it in a safe and robust way.
albanrampon - you say that you like new features. This is much more important than it sounds.
If any business can offer firmware-upgrades, like those we've heard of already, they will be much more interesting than a business that do not offer such upgrades. It does not cost the company much to have those upgrades.
Let's imagine what could have happened if the D-Link router did not have this feature.
At some point, I might have discovered that the router was causing the problems with my network.
If I had no way of getting this fixed, I would think less of the company, and would recommend any other company than theirs to people who asked me, since I only had bad experience with that particular product (well, that's not the case, just to make it clear).
But instead, more than 3 years after I bought the router, I am surprised to find fresh upgrades. A company that supports their products for such a long time impresses me. I willl first of all be fully satisfied with the product, since now it works perfectly, but second: I will be confident with buying from the company in the future, and will definitely recommend their product, even if I didn't try the competitor's similar product.
-And I believe that all users like upgrades, new features and improved stability.
So any business - big or small - that read this, have it in mind; you'll buy yourself more customers by using this feature - it's there already, just grab it.
NXP's newer Cortex-M chips have built-in flash-via-USB-"device", so if you want an easy USB-stick-like firmware-upgrade and don't want to do any coding at all, just wire up the USB Device interface. -That's pretty neat too.
The TARDIS will not be running a Web-server - you would never know which order the pages would appear in; time-travelling is very messy.
That's a real cool idea about making ethernet via mains. You only need to buy one ethernet-to-mains plug then.
No PHY, no magnetics, no RJ45...
I think a lot of products have bootloaders to update them in the field now.
Products are not necessarily connected, but you can plug a console or a USB key with the new firmware to update the Flash very easily.
My car aftermarket handsfree kit has that (it is also ARM Powered). After a year, they rolled out double Bluetooth standby: I can have both my personal and work phone connected at the same time, or stream something from a tablet. I like new features.
Will you have a webserver in your TARDIS?
I heard a nice idea: you use the power supply pins and modulate your comms on top: so you can re-flash without needing umpteen pins. Ethernet over mains for the poor
Tesla is quite cool; they made a real good move on the firmware update there.
I believe we should all have firmware-update in mind while we design. -Even if the firmware just holds a simple Web-server and a couple of Web-pages with Javascripts in them. You can benefit from being able to update the firmware in your laser-printer's Web-pages, when there's a new version of Explorer, Safari or iCab, which displays the page in a different way than you expected - or you want to update the Javascript to include an extra toner part number.
Heh, yes, the router is definitely in control of my computer. Maybe the computer is a quad-core 2.5GHz, which would be faster than the microcontroller in the router, but ... the router can slow down the computer so much that it would be faster than the computer.
When I receive the CS918, it will maybe be faster than my quad-core 2.5GHz Mac. It has several advantages.
For instance: You are in much better control over what the CPU is spending its time on doing.
Hello Jens, I read the following article a few days ago explaining how Tesla (the sport electric car company) saved a lot of money with OTA software update.
It saved them having to do a very costly recall.
The same way manufacturers do releases notes, I would like them to do an exhaustive list of active bug: you can spend days trying to fix something linked to the product rather than the way you set it up.
This list may not look too good... but who does still believe that some products are shipped completely bug free?
How does it feel to have a wireless router which is probably more powerful than your computer‽