[ECOS] Is Redboot suitable for my purposes?

[ECOS] Is Redboot suitable for my purposes?

[Øyvind Harboe]

Is Redboot/eCos is suitable for our purposes?


I suspect yes, but I'd appreciate a word of advice, if 
I'm on the wrong track.



(I'm trying to get things up and running on EB40a, which 
I will address in a seperate mail).


Background:


I'm in the process of putting together a development and deployment
solution for an Atmel processor. For this project we have chosen the
EB40a evaluation board.


It seems to me that Redboot is precisely what we need:


- bootloader which supports field upgrades (Redboot) via serial port and
x/y modem.
- tool chain
- runtime libraries
- startup code
- etc.

The needs for our application are very modest: serial port communication, 
communication (memory mapped io) with our FPGA and interrupt handling
(timer/serial/from the FPGA). 


From what I have read it is possible to launch Redboot applications(i.e. no
eCos OS, or a very minimal configuration). 


What should I expect the flash/ram usage overhead to be in such a scenario?


Øyvind Harboe

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Re: [ECOS] Is Redboot suitable for my purposes?

[Nick Garnett]

Øyvind Harboe <oyvind.harboe@zylin.com> writes:

> It seems to me that Redboot is precisely what we need:
> 
> 
> - bootloader which supports field upgrades (Redboot) via serial port and
> x/y modem.
> - tool chain
> - runtime libraries
> - startup code
> - etc.

The runtime libraries only really work within eCos, but see below.

> 
> The needs for our application are very modest: serial port communication, 
> communication (memory mapped io) with our FPGA and interrupt handling
> (timer/serial/from the FPGA). 
>
> 
> >From what I have read it is possible to launch Redboot applications(i.e. no
> eCos OS, or a very minimal configuration). 
> 


Even though your needs are modest, it would probably be easier to use
eCos. You can disable the kernel and any other packages and just use
it as a simple runtime. This way you will get something that
integrates properly with RedBoot.


> 
> What should I expect the flash/ram usage overhead to be in such a scenario?

On the EB40A at present Redboot occupies the first 64k of FLASH and
the first 32k of the onchip SRAM. This leaves most of the rest of the
FLASH, and 224k of the internal SRAM for application use, plus all of
any external SRAM that may be added.


-- 
Nick Garnett                    eCos Kernel Architect
http://www.ecoscentric.com/     The eCos and RedBoot experts


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