Embedded Software Development Technology Research

With the development of Information Technology (IT) and Integrate Circuit(IC), fast renovation involved in embedded application appears. The most important character of embedded development is to meet the demands of diverse applications. Different environment of embedded application is associated with diversity of hardware platform, operation system, developing and debugging tools. As bridge of hardware platform and up-level applications, embedded low-level software is extremely critical. A problem is arisen to us, that is how to efficiently design low-level software to meet the needs of system requirements with coordinated work of hardware, operation system and up-level applications. Main topic of this dissertation is to research a series of theories and technologies of embedded software development. Emphasis is made on the low-level software. Clue for this paper is described as follows. In the first part, some objects related to embedded software development are discussed. The discussion concerns mainstream hardware platform (processors), embedded operation systems, developing and debugging methods. Then three critical problems which closely-related to low-level software design are summarized. They are Transplantation of Operation System, Board Support Package (BSP), Developing and Booting technologies. Difficulty encountered when research into these problems are also discussed with solutions presented. In the third part, a developing practice on MPC860 platform is taken as an example to analysis design modes of embedded low-level software. Schemes applicable to different environment are also presented. All discuss is based on delving into target hardware platform and the three problems described above are also nucleus. Finally, summary is taken for this paper, advantages and disadvantages of the solutions are indicated with suggestions given for further research.