Operating System Support for SOPC Design

Chapter 18 is new to the fourth edition and introduces students to a Linux based Real-Time Operating System (RTOS). A tutorial shows how the μClinux OS can be ported to the DE2 and DE1 FPGA boards.

Many electronic devices that contain a processor now require complex software that needs support for multitasking, synchronization of tasks, a wide range of I/O devices, scheduling and buffering of I/O operations, memory management, graphics displays, file systems, and/or networking. Developing custom code (like was done in Chapter 16) that can provide all of these services is an expensive and time consuming task. For example, one recent cell phone design contained over five million lines of code. Few projects will have the time and funding needed to develop all of this code entirely on their own. In cases such as this, it makes economic sense to use an existing operating system. An operating system (OS) can provide a wide array of features and services including those listed above. Software developers are more productive when an operating system is present since they can work at a higher level of abstraction by using the operating system’s Application Programming Interface (API) calls to access the services provided by the OS.