Difference between revisions of "Best of Embedded Linux"

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(add power-efficient non-category)
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* most real-time
 
* most real-time
 
* most stable (longest documented runtime?)
 
* most stable (longest documented runtime?)
 +
* most power-efficient
 +
 +
One rule is that the "best" system must be an actual, shipping product.
 +
(I relaxed this rule for the boot-time category, until I can confirm their
 +
use in an actual product).
  
Some rules
 
 
== Smallest ==
 
== Smallest ==
 
My criteria for smallest system is the one with the least RAM, running in an actual useful product,
 
My criteria for smallest system is the one with the least RAM, running in an actual useful product,

Revision as of 15:02, 20 November 2013

Overview

This page is dedicated to documenting the "Best of Embedded Linux".

For now, this means the systems with the:

  • smallest memory footprint
  • fastest boot time

This page also has the most bizarre embedded Linux systems that I've heard of.

I considered adding things like the following, but for various reasons have not done so yet. (One problem is determining how to measure them).

  • most secure
  • most real-time
  • most stable (longest documented runtime?)
  • most power-efficient

One rule is that the "best" system must be an actual, shipping product. (I relaxed this rule for the boot-time category, until I can confirm their use in an actual product).

Smallest

My criteria for smallest system is the one with the least RAM, running in an actual useful product, with a recent (2.6.11 or above) kernel.

In October of 2013, I postulated that the following product was the smallest Linux product I knew of: TP-Link MR3020

  • What is it: WiFi hotspot
  • Flash/Rom: 4M flash chip
    • partitions: 128K U-Boot
    • 1M kernel
    • 2.8M root filesystem
  • RAM: 32M DRAM


See http://lwn.net/Articles/568943

Candidates

These were other products or systems mentioned at the ELCE 2013 status talk (BOF section):

  • VTec - has 8-meg. systems
  • LeapFrog - 8M RAM, 16M flash
  • Pixster color - 4MB RAM??
    • has LH75411 (NXP) ARM7TDMI core
  • memento (sp?) click?
  • EFM32
    • ARM M3 (32-bit, no-MMU) processor, can run uClinux from Pengutronix (v3.2)
    • Teaser video for Giat Gecko Development Kit uses 4MB RAM (with 775KB used after boot-up) at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WS3pvsOmp4


Fastest booting

My criteria for fastest boot is one with the least time to go from cold boot (no power whatsoever) to first available product use. This includes the time for bootloader, user space, video startup (if applicable), until the product's primary use is fully available to the user (e.g. when a picture can actually be taken, for a digital camera).

Other candidates

  • Chevy volt - need details
  • Volvo - need details

Most Bizarre

Linux on 8-bit AVR

Yann Morin <yann.morin.1998@free.fr> wrote:

Not sure it really applies, but there was this crazy (russian?) guy who managed to run Linux on an 8-bit micro-controller:

   http://dmitry.gr/index.php?r=05.Projects&proj=07.%20Linux%20on%208bit

TL;DR version: The guy wrote a basic VM running on a 8-bit AVR, emulating the ARM instruction set (armv5, PXA255). That runs a small hypervisor to provide basic functionality via hypercalls.

Linux running in your browser in an emulator in Javascript

See http://bellard.org/jslinux/ To see Linux booting in an emulator written in Javascript, in your browser.

Instructions

Please add more information to this page. If you know of an extreme use of Linux, please add it.