Embedded Real time System Design

1
Embedded Real time System Design

• Introduction to the course

2
ERTSD course - Overview

• Course is taught by Rob Williams Craig Duffy
• Craig will teach the lectures the start of term 1
  2. Rob will teach the second part
• There is 1 large assignment with a phased
  hand-in Christmas and Easter.
• Practical sessions taught by Rob Craig

3
ERTSD Craigs 1st part

• In the first set of lectures and practical
  sessions I will be covering cross developing code
  and operating systems onto a single board
  computer.
• The practical sessions will involve small groups
  of students installing Linux onto the target
  hardware. The Puppeteer will be a central part
  of the system developed as part of the assignment.

4
Lecture list Craigs part

• Selecting a language and operating system for
  embedded systems
• The SA1110 and Puppeteer boards
• Selecting an cross compiler and OS for embedded
  systems
• Using Linux as an embedded OS
• Porting the Linux kernel

5
The Puppeteer board 1

• The Puppeteer boards are based on the StrongArm
  SA1110 processor
• Intel version of ARM core
• 200MHz CPU
• MMU support
• 2 Serial interfaces
• PCMCIA interface
• Ethernet

6
The Puppeteer board 2

• The board was originally developed for cable set
  top boxes, but has a large number of potential
  usages
• Has 2 serial interfaces - irda
• Audio support TS35143 codec
• Ethernet support SMCS LAN91C96
• 8 Mb of boot block flash
• 32 Mb of DRAM
• Altera 6k FPGA
• Xilinx CPLD
• Small EEPROM
• I2C support

7
The Linux kernel

• The kernel we will be porting will be a standard
  2.6.16 you can upgrade!
• We will need to port to the specifics of the
  board
• Some of the serial port code will need modifying
• The 2.6 kernel has problems with the 2nd serial
  port!
• The Ethernet chip needs porting
• This requires understanding the new device driver
  model
• NFS is really useful for development purposes
• The MTD system needs porting/configuring

8
The Linux system

• Although we will examine various distributions we
  will create our own Linux system using
• uClibc
• Busybox
• Netkit
• Very useful for the tcp/ip and NFS tools
• NFS
• GDB version 6
• I have a (almost) beta version of kgdb for 2.6!

9
Development environment

• We will be using buildroot kit from codepoet
• Use any gcc gt 3.1 load in the 2.6 headers too.
• Buildroot provides a pre-built file system plus
  loads of utilities even some audio ones!
• We will still have to use the conversion and
  download utilities
• elf2bin to convert elf binaries to MSbin format
• eloadsvr to download images to the Puppeteer
  board

10
Literature and information sources

• Some books
• Real-time Systems Development R Williams
• Building Embedded Linux Systems K Yaghmour
• Embedded Linux C Hollabaugh
• Embedded Linux Primer C Hallinhan
• Arm System Developers Guide Sloss, Symes
  Wright
• ARM Architecture Reference Manual D Seal

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Useful web sites

• My homes pages
• cems.uwe.ac.uk/cduffy, kenny.netlabs.cems.uwe.ac.
  uk/cduffy
• Loads of datasheets on the kenny page
• Web sites
• ARM UK, armlinux, GNU, uClibc,
• IBM developerworks
• Linux Journal
• Kernel newbies
• Linux from scratch
• The Linux Documentation Project (LDP)