Status of Embedded Linux - ELC 2012

Tim Bird, software engineer at Sony, discusses recent development in embedded Linux at the Embedded Linux Conference 2012.

Abstract: Tim discusses changes to the kernel, improvements to embedded-related sub-systems, and new industry initiatives likely to affect embedded Linux developers in the future. Also, Tim discusses the direction of the Linux Foundation CE Workgroup, and their contract work and projects for this year. Last year highlights are also discussed, as well as ways to continue to improve Linux going forward.

Here are the key points of this presentation:

Linux Kernel Version changes: 2.6.38 to 3.3-rc3
Technology Areas:
- Bootup Time – With improvement in the kernel, bootloader and user-space
- Graphics – 2D/3D implementation. New /dev/ion and CMA graphics stuffs
- Accelerated Rendering – e.g. Renderscript
- Graphics Drivers – e.g. PowerVR
- Multimedia – Gstreamer, Android Media Layer (stagefright) and codec wars (e.g. patent issues with WebM/VP8 that interferes open source licenses).
- File systems – Mainly UBIFS (default raw flash file system replacing JFFS2) and YAFFS2. But Google is moving to ext-4 with eMMC devices.
- Power Management
- System Size – Work is still going on on low footprint distros such as linux-tiny and poky-tiny.
The hot areas right now are power management, ARM board support refactoring and GPU management.
CE Workgroup Projects:
- YAFFS2 effort
- Trace Format Standard (CTF – Common Trace Format)
- DFU (Device Firmware Update)
- Improvement for UBIFS mount time
- Flash File System Benchmarks.
- Android Mainline Project: Use most Android patches in mainline kernel.
- LTSI (Long Term Support Initiative) to be released in June 2012.
Miscellaneous:
- Tools:
  - Qemu for Linux and Android emulation
  - Eclipse
  - Tracing tools (Perf, ftrace, LTTng 2.0)
- Build Systems: Yocto project and custom build systems.
- Embedded Distributions:
  - Tizen
  - WebOS
  - Legacy Custom embedded distros (no standard)
- Android 4.0 SDK release (last October)
- Resources:
  - Stack Overflow is used more and more for embedded Linux
  - elinux.org Wiki has got a lot of good documentation
  - LWN.net to follow kernel changes.

You can also download the presentation slides on elinux.org.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.