Technical Challenge

The target hardware had a system on chip from cirrus logic (CS89712) based on ARM7TDMI core with 8MB flash and 16MB of RAM, integrated Ethernet chip, UARTs and LCD panel, keyboard facilities. We had to design a solution that could run efficiently on this hardware, with a minimum software and development cost.
This involved:

1. Building a cross development platform to build applications and libraries.

2. Developing a board support package for our platform. 

3. Identifying an operating system to suit our needs and porting it to new platform.

4. Developing the applications, libraries needed for user interface.

5. Creating an application, which can download and burn required binaries, applications and libraries to the target platform

The Solution

We decided to use Open-source software due to its accessibility, reliability and means of support. Use of Open source software promotes creativity and allows developers to quickly design reliable and robust embedded applications.

The GNU tool chain was selected since ported versions, necessary patches, and technical support were readily available. This helped us to compile and build a new tool chain for our platform, thus a cross-development environment for further application development and kernel porting was built. 

Embedded Linux was decided upon as the development platform because of its performance, reliability, open source availability, lowcost and support. It also provides necessary infrastructure for developing a new applications in any domain .The kernel was ported to our platform.

We developed necessary low-level drivers to support the board. We also developed necessary kernel level drivers for ethernet chip, LCD controller and keyboard.

A low-level application was developed to download the boot loader, ported kernel, libraries, and applications to the target board. The same software was used later to burn boot loader, ported kernel and the applications to the flash.

A stand-alone system running on embedded Linux platform capable of user interaction was completed.

With the kind of technical expertise we have, the above challenges were met within a short period of time.

The Result

Linux was supported on the hardware platform. GRACELABS acquired technical expertise on a new SOC platform in areas like tool chain building, OS porting, driver development BSP development etc.