@c @c COPYRIGHT (c) 1988-2002. @c On-Line Applications Research Corporation (OAR). @c All rights reserved. @c @c $Id$ @c @chapter CPU Model Variations XXX enhance using portability presentation from CS595 class. See general/portability.ppt. Since the text in the next section was written, RTEMS view of portability has grown to distinguish totally portable, CPU family dependent, CPU model dependent, peripheral chip dependent and board dependent. This text was part of a larger paper that did not even cover portability completely as it existed when this was written and certainly is out of date now. :) @section Overview of RTEMS Portability RTEMS was designed to be a highly portable, reusable software component. This reflects the fundamental nature of embedded systems in which hardware components, ranging from boards to peripherals to even the processor itself, are selected specifically to meet the requirements of a particular project. @subsection Processor Families Since there are a wide variety of embedded systems, there are a wide variety of processors targeting embedded systems. RTEMS alleviates some of the burden on the embedded systems programmer by providing a consistent, high-performance environment regardless of the target processor. RTEMS has been ported to a variety of microprocessor families including: @itemize @bullet @item Motorola ColdFire @item Motorola MC68xxx @item Motorola MC683xx @item Intel ix86 (i386, i486, Pentium and above) @item Intel i960 @item ARM @item MIPS @item PowerPC 4xx, 5xx, 6xx, 7xx, 8xx, and 84xx @item SPARC @item Hitachi H8/300 @item Hitachi SH @item OpenCores OR32 @item Texas Instruments C3x/C4x @end itemize In addition, there is a port of RTEMS to UNIX that uses standard UNIX services to simulate the embedded environment. Each RTEMS port supplies a well-defined set of services that are the foundation for the highly portable RTEMS and POSIX API implementations. When porting to a new processor family, one must provide the processor dependent implementation of these services. This set of processor dependent core services includes software to perform interrupt dispatching, context switches, and manipulate task register sets. The RTEMS approach to handling varying processor models reflects the approach taken by the designers of the processors themselves. In each processor family, there is a core architecture that must be implemented on all processor models within the family to provide any level of compatibility. Many of the modern RISC architectures refer to this as the Architectural Definition. The Architectural Definition is intended to be independent of any particular implementation. Additionally, there is a feature set which is allowed to vary in a defined way amongst the processor models. These feature sets may be defined as Optional in the Architectural Definition, be left as implementation defined characteristics, or be processor model specific extensions. Support for floating point, virtual memory, and low power mode are common Optional features included in an Architectural Definition. The processor family dependent software in RTEMS includes a definition of which features are present in each supported processor model. This often makes adding support for a new processor model within a supported family as simple as determining which features are present in the new processor implementation. If the new processor model varies in a way previously unaccounted for, then this must be addressed. This could be the result of a new Optional feature set being added to the Architectural Definition. Alternatively, this particular processor model could have a new and different implementation of a feature left as undefined in the Architectural Definition. This would require software to be written to utilize that feature. There is a relatively small set of features that may vary in a processor family. As the number of processor models in the family grow, the addition of each new model only requires adding an entry for the new model to the single feature table. It does not require searching for every conditional based on processor model and adding the new model in the appropriate place. This significantly eases the burden of adding a new processor model as it centralizes and logically simplifies the process. @subsection Boards Being portable both between models within a processor family and across processor families is not enough to address the needs of embedded systems developers. Custom board development is the norm for embedded systems. Each of these boards is optimized for a particular project. The processor and peripheral set have been chosen to meet a particular set of system requirements. The tools in the embedded systems developers’ toolbox must support their project’s unique board. RTEMS addresses this issue via the Board Support Package. RTEMS segregates board specific code to make it possible for the embedded systems developer to easily replace and customize this software. A minimal Board Support Package includes device drivers for a clock tick, console I/O, and a benchmark timer (optional) as well as startup and miscellaneous support code. The Board Support Package for a project may be extended to include the device drivers for any peripherals on the custom board. @subsection Applications One important design goal of RTEMS was to provide a bridge between the application software and the target hardware. Most hardware dependencies for real-time applications can be localized to the low level device drivers which provide an abstracted view of the hardware. The RTEMS I/O interface manager provides an efficient tool for incorporating these hardware dependencies into the system while simultaneously providing a general mechanism to the application code that accesses them. A well designed real-time system can benefit from this architecture by building a rich library of standard application components which can be used repeatedly in other real-time projects. The following figure illustrates how RTEMS serves as a buffer between the project dependent application code and the target hardware. @section Coding Issues XXX deal with this as it applies to score/cpu. Section name may be bad.