Article: Embedded Linux

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Embedded Linux

The embedded Linux is the name given for a Linux-based operating system that is used in running various mobile devices like cell phones, PDA’s etc. Linux is also suitable for other embedded applications such as navigation equipment, networking equipment, industrial automation and various medical instruments. The embedded Linux can be differentiated from desktop version of Linux in the fact that embedded Linux is designed for devices with comparably limited resources, such as smaller sizes of RAM, battery power and comparatively much more limited secondary storage.

Features of Embedded Linux

Some of the most important features of an Embedded Linux distribution could be summed up as follows:

  • The source code can be modified and redistributed.
  • No royalty or licensing costs.
  • Requires less than 2MB for a typical installation.
  • Known to be fairly stable and quite mature.

Technical Details

An embedded linux device primarily has various software and hardware requirements.

Software Requirements

An embedded Linux system fundamentally consists of three elements:

  • The most important part is the Linux micro-kernel, which comprises of process management, memory management and timing services.
  • A boot utility
  • An initialization process

In addition to the above mentioned requirements, other elements of importance which could be added are:

  • Various drivers for hardware.
  • To provide the needed functionality for some extra application processes. Depending on the requirements it might also contain other elements such as, Networking stacks like TCP/IP etc, A file system, 32-bit internal CPU and a disk for storing semi-transient data and swap capability.

Hardware Requirements

The Hardware platform for an embedded system contain two major components:

  • Memory Management Unit(MMU)
  • Real Time Operating System (RTOS)

Some of the most commonly available hardware architectures in an embedded linux device are mentioned below:

  • StrongARM
  • PowerPC
  • MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages)

Generic Architecture

A commonly used Linux based mobile device architecture typically consists of the following layers:

  • Applications
  • User Interface Library and Platform services and frameworks
  • Core services and Libraries
  • Kernel and Drivers [1]

Summary of the research literature

Practical perspectives

Opportunities for research

Links

References

  1. ↑ http://www.cs.tut.fi/jarvensj/mobo07/embedded-linux.pdf
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