Portable Embedded Software Design Based On MIPS Architecture

Embedded system is implemented widely in modern electronic products. More and more embedded CPUs come out, which is from 8 bits to 32 bits. More and more control software comes out, which is from assembly to OS. Two challenges are faced in the modern embedded system design, one is the design based on the specific new type CPU platform, and the other is that the embedded design should be portable and reusable. MIPS 32 CPU is implemented in PMON (Packet Over SONET Monitor) system. The hardware and software environments of the implementation are illustrated in this paper. Software design is illustrated in the environment of OS Nucleus and the design is considered to be portable and reusable. The design is ported into OS Linux at last as an example. Firstly, portability in embedded software is discussed. Portability in embedded software is compared with in common software engineering and the conception and the realization of embedded software is given out. In the following, the software architecture design of the PMON implementation in single address space OS is illustrated with Nucleus as an example. In the design, the portability and reusability are considered. The whole software architecture, the architecture of drivers, the architecture of applications, the dataflow of the program, the memory map of the program and the method to test the software realization are described. The software architecture design of the PMON implementation in multiple address space OS is also illustrated with PMON software porting from Nucleus into Linux as an example. Nucleus and Linux are compared and analyses in the end.