Not too many years ago, finding a resident operating system in an embedded system was atypical. Very high-end embedded systems might have had something like
Today’s general-purpose and flexible embedded systems, such as cell phones, TV set-top boxes, and personal digital assistants, commonly include operating systems along with their low-price memory chips and highly functional microcontrollers.
Advantages of using a resident operating system
An embedded OS offers various advantages:
- A rich set of well-tested primitives in an OS can be combined to provide functionality without requiring reinventing (and debugging) new code.
- After its initial deployment, an OS provides a familiar path for enhancing and otherwise modifying a product.
- An OS has built-in capabilities for a wide range of purposes, such as wireless Internet connectivity, a GUI for the user, and so on.
- As a product line matures and evolves, a full-featured, non-stagnant OS will grow as well.
- Training new hires to use an OS is somewhat cut and dried.
Advantages of Linux as the embedded OS
Linux offers some additional advantages beyond the foregoing list.
For starters, the large and helpful development community is an aid to beginners, and welcomes contributions by experienced developers. The community may, in some cases, constitute a valuable set of business contacts; it may provide possible contract employees for your company’s projects or consulting opportunities for you.
Linux has benefited from the pre-existing body of GNU software for a variety of architectures, and the GNU compiler collection (gcc) has been ported to these architectures. As a result, in scoping a new product, you have a rich set of architectures from which to choose. Further, if you find a reason to go to an as-yet-unsupported architecture, you’ll also find extensive documentation on how to do the port.
We are just starting to see vendors who provide integrated tool sets for developing embedded systems with Linux; MontaVista Software and Metrowerks come to mind as examples. On the other hand, you can roll your own IDE using tools rooted in GNU software packages, which predate Linux and already have a history in embedded development. The GNU debugger, gdb, is a good example.
Debugging in Linux a big advantage
The subject of debugging is of particular interest. Here, the open-source nature of Linux offers a special benefit. Let’s say you are immersed in debugging an embryonic new product and are struggling with a particularly pernicious bug, and you can’t find anything wrong with your software. It dawns on you that the flaw may be in the infrastructure, drawn from the underlying OS. Because the source is open, you can continue the debugging by crossing into the OS itself. If you find a bug in the OS you can, in one way or another, exterminate it, thereby benefiting yourself and the entire community. If the architecture is a popular one, other developers who encounter OS bugs will also improve the Linux port. The OS will improve, and you will be aware of the details because of communication among the developers. It is difficult for a vendor of a proprietary OS to compete with this model of evolution toward excellence.
Once your embedded system is ready to go to production, you need not pay a per-unit cost for the OS itself. Keep in mind that it is likely that the retraining cost for switching to Linux will be significant. Nevertheless, once the expertise is assimilated, that initial cost can be rapidly amortized. In the long run, the use of Linux is most likely to be extremely cost-effective.
Who can develop these systems?
Historically it has required significant hardware familiarity to develop embedded systems. This has been subtly but significantly altered today, when many embedded projects involve a target with a resident OS. In such an environment, the traditional desktop development tools (the full complement of high-level languages) can be applied to a wide range of embedded projects. Although it is still true that someone involved in the project must be intimately cognizant of the hardware, other programmers can now be productive.
Many of these programmers have had no exposure to embedded systems development but could make the transition with rather minimal retraining. Some of these programmers came out of computer science programs, rather than the less-common computer engineering programs. The latter students will likely have some embedded systems exposure, whereas the former group is less likely to have had similar training.
How to prepare
Let’s say you are an accomplished programmer but have no experience in embedded systems. How can you begin to make the transition into this new area? Certainly you can undertake self-education. Various books are available.
Here are two recent releases:
Building Embedded Linux Systems, Karim Yaghmour, O’Reilly (2003).
Linux for Embedded and Real-time Applications, Doug Abbott, Newnes/Elsevier (2003).
The first book, by Yaghmour, is a readable yet definitive book and should belong in your self-education library. It may become the classic reference on embedded Linux systems. The second volume is quite different in flavor. While Yaghmour comes across as a generalist, Abbott gives us a very hands-on book and chooses a specific hardware target — an old 486 PC. Coming at the subject from these two viewpoints is a great way to learn.
Computer science departments undoubtedly will be adding embedded systems courses. Typical computer science departments already have curricula employing Linux systems, so the move to embedded Linux courses could be relatively easy. There is something of a problem for schools whose students have very restricted budgets. My university serves that sort of demographic. The cost to the student for such a course involves two expenditures: a book and an embedded target.
Where a computer engineering curriculum might have the students build the embedded target, the already busy, crowded computer science curriculum might prefer to use a pre-existing embedded target. My approach was to seek and obtain a small grant to support the purchase an appropriate number of embedded target systems to minimize the cost to the student.
For the target, I chose the Sharp Zaurus SL5500, a PDA. The next generation of Zaurus products has been brought to market, so the SL5500 is heavily discounted. But even a slightly obsolete PDA makes a wonderful and mobile embedded system target. Many of the capabilities of the Linux OS can be deployed on this PDA.
The intent of the course is to have it grow dynamically by having interested members of the Linux community contribute to enhancing the course by offering other target choices. The course is meant for existing programmers who merely need a hands-on introduction to programming in the cross-platform environment typical of embedded systems development. The current beta version of the course can be found at this site.
This may or may not be its long-term home, depending on traffic and security concerns that may arise.
It would be ideal if we could find a target for about $100, perhaps using one of the reference designs that have surfaced in this last year. Then budget-crunched computer science departments could require the students to purchase the target; the cost would be in line with a textbook. Where could we find a $100 target that might survive for a reasonable lifetime in the PDA market?
Companies such as IBM and Motorola, which have released reference designs, might consider this as a way to promulgate their design ideas to the next generation of embedded-system programmers. Or perhaps a company like Sharp might consider giving one of its obsolete PDAs a second lease on life by aiming it at this market. The PDA could be packaged with the free course on a CD. We might also hope that the costs for such products will decrease dramatically as they become commodities.
Dr. Richard Sevenich is a professor of computer science at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Wash. His main areas of interest are application-specific languages, fuzzy logic, and industrial control. He has been a featured speaker at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention.
Category:
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