[Tinyos-8051wg] tep121, SDCC

[Joe Polastre]

> The inline everywhere in NesC is questionable. In my statistics the use of
> SRAM is much less in TinyOS apps. If a MCU has 8KB SRAM, the
> inline should be removed completely (that is my personal opition).

The inlining is important for latency, not SRAM usage.  Many devices
have bit or byte based radios with stringent timing requirements.  If
you have to follow a large call stack, the delay between interrupt and
execution can be very significant.  We saw this on the Mica1 platform
with the RFM radio and ATmega128L microcontroller.

Since nesC provides a component model with flexibility to interchange
components, the way it prevents horrible performance is through
inlining.  Given that code typically blows up by at least 50% when
compiled for the 8051 architecture, adding additional delays could be
disastrous.

-Joe