Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

For ARM, I have seen IAR emit unoptimized code half the size of GCCs output with speed optimizations enabled (which lead to slightly smaller code than size optimization!). When optimizing for size, IAR shrank the code size by another 1/3 to 1/2. When you are really strugging to fit functionality into a tight contoller because your hw engineers won't put in a bigger contoller, this is a dealbreaker.



Agree completely that it is a deal breaker. But don’t be too hard on the hardware engineers, sometimes the BOM can not afford the extra 17 cents.


I guess the tone came out wrong. I understand why we got the HW we got. In this case it wasn't even about cost. The power available to the device as a whole was so low that we were counting microamps. It was all incredibly tight:

Just switching on the wrong SoC feature would bring the entire thing outside the envelope. Even the contents of the passive LCD affected power consumption in adverse ways. Showing a checkerboard pattern could make the device fail.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: