Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

By : Frank Vasquez, Chris Simmonds
5 (3)
Book Image

Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

5 (3)
By: Frank Vasquez, Chris Simmonds

Overview of this book

If you’re looking for a book that will demystify embedded Linux, then you’ve come to the right place. Mastering Embedded Linux Programming is a fully comprehensive guide that can serve both as means to learn new things or as a handy reference. The first few chapters of this book will break down the fundamental elements that underpin all embedded Linux projects: the toolchain, the bootloader, the kernel, and the root filesystem. After that, you will learn how to create each of these elements from scratch and automate the process using Buildroot and the Yocto Project. As you progress, the book will show you how to implement an effective storage strategy for flash memory chips and install updates to a device remotely once it’s deployed. You’ll also learn about the key aspects of writing code for embedded Linux, such as how to access hardware from apps, the implications of writing multi-threaded code, and techniques to manage memory in an efficient way. The final chapters demonstrate how to debug your code, whether it resides in apps or in the Linux kernel itself. You’ll also cover the different tracers and profilers that are available for Linux so that you can quickly pinpoint any performance bottlenecks in your system. By the end of this Linux book, you’ll be able to create efficient and secure embedded devices using Linux.
Table of Contents (27 chapters)
1
Section 1: Elements of Embedded Linux
10
Section 2: System Architecture and Design Decisions
18
Section 3: Writing Embedded Applications
22
Section 4: Debugging and Optimizing Performance

Storage options

Embedded devices need storage that takes little power and is physically compact, robust, and reliable over a lifetime of perhaps tens of years. In almost all cases, this means solid-state storage. Solid-state storage was introduced many years ago with read-only memory (ROM), but for the past 20 years, it has been a flash memory of some kind. There have been several generations of flash memory in that time, progressing from NOR to NAND to managed flash such as eMMC.

NOR flash is expensive but reliable and can be mapped into the CPU address space, which allows you to execute code directly from flash. NOR flash chips are low capacity, ranging from a few megabytes to a gigabyte or so.

NAND flash memory is much cheaper than NOR and is available in higher capacities, in the range of tens of megabytes to tens of gigabytes. However, it needs a lot of hardware and software support to turn it into a useful storage medium.

Managed flash memory consists of one or more...