The Research And Development Of Embedded System Based On ARM For Teaching

When embedded system changes the structure of industry, it also influences people's conception. 8-bit SCMs (Single-Chip Machine), which have a low working frequency, have a lower rate of development. It is clear that 32-bit Embedded Micro Processors and advanced developing method, which is more important than the former one, will replace the 8-bit's consequentially. In this case, colleges, especially those who have electrical department, would switch their attention to embedded system. Many colleges, like Tsing Hua University, Zhe Jiang University, have been giving courses on embedded system, and founding laboratories with embedded platform for teaching. Therefore, the author devotes himself to research the platform of embedded system for teaching, and advances integrated scheme and technical details.The platform has 3 parts, which are the bottom hardware platform, the embedded system and the Boot Loader, and the top application layer. Therefore, the author will addresses the full technology and implementation in the research and development of the embedded system for teaching based on the above 3-layer structure:1. While analyzing the requirement of teaching and the actuality of embedded system, a scheme of the teaching platform based on ARM + uClinux is advanced; then according to the characteristic of automation, the hardware platform designing details is given.2. Above the hardware platform, the Boot Loader is worked out, which initializes the environment of hardware and software when the system power on, and offers many useful tools for loading images, debugging, checking memory, etc.3. Then, uClinux with a type of Flash file system--JFFS2, is ported to the platform. The author describes the porting details and addresses how the uClinux works on while the system powered on. It is an important part of embedded system, because of its device drivers, all the codes above it could be ported from one system to another, without any modification.4. Device drivers take on a special role in the Linux kernel. Any device supported by Linux, is surely having a device driver, or it would not work well in Linux. Therefore, an integrated system is necessarily has device drivers. So, the author introduces how the device drivers works on, and gives an example of designing a typical character device driver—I2C master device.5. At last, an example of designing a multi-channel MP3 player based on the former platform is given, which will help those who use the platform to understand how does embedded system be developed.