> Personally, I cannot see the big, conceptual difference between a
> binary module that contains "firmware", and a binary module that
> contains the equivalent of firmware, but is executed by the host CPU
> rather than some embedded processor.
One fairly major difference between these approaches is that firmware
executed by an embedded processor will stay constant (modulo bug
fixes) regardless of the host processor. A binary module that is
executed by the host processor will by necessity be almost completely
different when built for two different host processors.
Given the wide variety of processors supported by Linux and the speed
with which new ports are being performed, this is a rather substantial
difference.
-- John Kodis.