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There's no particular technical reason of which I'm aware why Windows couldn't be put into ROM, unless someone is committing serious coding crimes. However, there's really no performance advantage to ROM. I'm not an EE, but I believe that flash-ROM as is used in something like a CF is actually quite a bit slower than SDRAM is, so running out of ROM would actually slow you down. For something like a PDA or a cell phone, it's not an issue because the processor involved is quite a lot slower already and because the users are willing to accept a performance hit. The processor in a Palm only runs about 30 MHz, and the processors in cell phones are usually even slower than that, so slow memory doesn't gate system performance. (The new WinCE devices tend to run about 100-200 MHz, which is still quite slow by the standards of a PC.) FlashROM is essential in such an application because a hard disk isn't practical and the firmware has to be retained if the battery is removed. Also, FlashROM is cheaper per bit than the power-efficient static RAM used in those devices. But for something like a fast PC (which can use cheap power-hungry dynamic RAM), there's really nothing to be gained this way. Flash is also quite a bit more expensive per bit than dynamic RAM (such as SDRAM). It's not possible to actually implement an operating system as discrete hardware. We're long past the point where anything like that is even remotely practical. Keep those cards and letters coming, folks! (discuss) |
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