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ppt- unit-6 part-2

This document discusses device drivers and system calls in embedded systems. Device drivers are essential for hardware management and can be architecture-specific or generic, with various functions for hardware control. System calls provide an interface for user programs to request services from the operating system, typically involving reading and writing operations with error handling.

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2 views

ppt- unit-6 part-2

This document discusses device drivers and system calls in embedded systems. Device drivers are essential for hardware management and can be architecture-specific or generic, with various functions for hardware control. System calls provide an interface for user programs to request services from the operating system, typically involving reading and writing operations with error handling.

Uploaded by

MANAS PATEL
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Unit-6 part 2

Part-2
• Device drivers, System calls and Programming languages: assembly
languages, high level languages like C/C++, Source Code Engineering
tool for Embedded C/C++. Introduction to Embedded Java.
•
Defining device drivers
• Most embedded hardware requires some type of software
initialization and management.
• The software that directly interfaces with and controls this hardware
is called a device driver.
• All embedded systems that require software have, at the very least,
device driver software in their system software layer.
• Device drivers are the software libraries that initialize the hardware
and manage access to the hardware by higher layers of software.
• Device drivers are the liaison between the hardware and the
operating system, middleware, and application layers.
Ref: https://www.edn.com/embedded-systems-architecture-device-drivers-part-1-interrupt-
handling/
Device drivers- Compatibility
• The reader must always check the details about the particular
hardware if the hardware component is not 100% identical to what is
currently supported by the embedded system.
• Never assume existing device drivers in the embedded system will be
compatible for a particular hardware part—even if the hardware is
the same type of hardware that the embedded device currently
supports! So, it is very important when trying to understand device
driver libraries that:
• Different types of hardware will have different device driver requirements
that need to be met.
• Even the same type of hardware, such as Flash memory, that are created by
different manufacturers can require substantially different device driver
software libraries to support within the embedded device.
Device drivers_ architecture-specific or
generic
• Device drivers are typically considered either architecture-specific or
generic.
• A device driver that is architecture-specific manages the hardware
that is integrated into the master processor (the architecture).
• Examples of architecture-specific drivers that initialize and enable
components within a master processor include on-chip memory,
integrated memory managers (memory management units (MMUs)),
and floating-point hardware.
Device drivers- generic
• A device driver that is generic manages hardware that is located on the
board and not integrated onto the master processor.
• In a generic driver, there are typically architecture-specific portions of
source code, because the master processor is the central control unit and
to gain access to anything on the board usually means going through the
master processor.
• However, the generic driver also manages board hardware that is not
specific to that particular processor, which means that a generic driver can
be configured to run on a variety of architectures that contain the related
board hardware for which the driver is written.
• Generic drivers include code that initializes and manages access to the
remaining major components of the board, including board buses (I2C, PCI,
PCMCIA, etc.), off-chip memory (controllers, level 2+ cache, Flash, etc.),
and off-chip I/O (Ethernet, RS-232, display, mouse, etc.).
Regardless of the type of device driver or the hardware it manages, all device drivers are generally
made up of all or some combination of the following functions:

• Hardware Startup: initialization of the hardware upon PowerON or reset.


• Hardware Shutdown: configuring hardware into its PowerOFF state.
• Hardware Disable: allowing other software to disable hardware on-the-fly.
• Hardware Enable: allowing other software to enable hardware on-the-fly.
• Hardware Acquire: allowing other software to gain singular (locking) access to hardware.
• Hardware Release: allowing other software to free (unlock) hardware.
• Hardware Read: allowing other software to read data from hardware.
• Hardware Write: allowing other software to write data to hardware.
• Hardware Install: allowing other software to install new hardware on-the-fly.
• Hardware Uninstall: allowing other software to remove installed hardware on-the-fly.
• Hardware Mapping: allowing for address mapping to and from hardware storage devices
when reading, writing, and/or deleting data.
• Hardware Unmapping: allowing for unmapping (removing) blocks of data from hardware
storage devices.
System calls
• System calls provide an interface to the services made available by an
operating system.
• These calls are generally available as functions written in C and C++,
although certain low-level tasks (for example, tasks where hardware
must be accessed directly) may have to be written using assembly-
language instructions.
System calls
• System calls provide the means for a user program to ask the operating system to perform tasks
reserved for the operating system on the user program’s behalf.
• A system call is invoked in a variety of ways, depending on the functionality provided by the
underlying processor.
• In all forms, it is the method used by a process to request action by the operating system.
• A system call usually takes the form of a trap to a specific location in the interrupt vector.
• This trap can be executed by a generic trap instruction, although some systems have a specific
syscall instruction to invoke a system call.
• When a system call is executed, it is typically treated by the hardware as a software interrupt.
• Control passes through the interrupt vector to a service routine in the operating system, and the
mode bit is set to kernel mode.
• The system-call service routine is a part of the operating system.
• The kernel examines the interrupting instruction to determine what system call has occurred; a
parameter indicates what type of service the user program is requesting.
• Additional information needed for the request may be passed in registers, on the stack, or in
memory (with pointers to the memory locations passed in registers).
• The kernel verifies that the parameters are correct and legal, executes the request, and returns
control to the instruction following the system call.
Example of how system call are used
System calls
• When both files are set up, we enter a loop that reads from the input
file (a system call) and writes to the output file (another system call).
• Each read and write must return status information regarding various
possible error conditions.
• On input, the program may find that the end of the file has been
reached or that there was a hardware failure in the read (such as a
parity error).
• The write operation may encounter various errors, depending on the
output device (for example, no more available disk space).
• Finally, after the entire file is copied, the program may close both files
(two system calls), write a message to the console or window (more
system calls), and finally terminate normally (the final system call).

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