Tag: embedded

Bootlin at FOSDEM 2015

FOSDEM BannerFor many open-source developers based in Europe, the FOSDEM is probably the most useful, interesting and exciting conference. Once again this year, several Bootlin engineers will attend the conference:

  • Maxime Ripard, mainly involved in Allwinner related kernel development, as well as more recently OpenWRT support for Marvell platforms
  • Antoine Ténart, involved in Marvell Berlin related kernel development, and one of the developers of our Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded training course
  • Alexandre Belloni, involved in Atmel processors related kernel development, and also one of our Yocto expert.
  • Thomas Petazzoni, involved in Marvell EBU processors related kernel development, and doing a lot of Buildroot contributions.

If you are attending, and want to know more about Bootlin, or discuss career or project opportunities, do not hesitate to contact us prior to the conference. Many of us will probably attend a significant number of talks from the Embedded track, so it should be easy to find us.

Last but not least, Alexandre Belloni will be giving a talk about Starting with the Yocto Project, which will take place on Sunday, at 3 PM in room Lameere.

Finally, Thomas Petazzoni has organized and will participate to the Buildroot Developers Meeting organized right after FOSDEM, and sponsored by Google and Mind.

Call for participation for the Embedded Linux Conference 2015

San Jose, CaliforniaThe Embedded Linux Conference Europe is just over that it’s already time to think about the Embedded Linux Conference 2015, which will take place on March 23-25 in San Jose, California.

The call for participation has been published recently, and interested speakers are invited to submit their proposals before January, 9th 2015. The notifications of whether your talk is accepted or not will be sent on January, 16th and the final schedule is planned to be published on January, 23th.

At Bootlin, we really would like to encourage developers who are working on interesting embedded Linux related projects to submit a talk about what they are doing: talking about a specific open-source project, feedback on some experience doing an embedded Linux based product, etc. The scope of topics covered by the Embedded Linux Conference is fairly broad, so do not hesitate to submit a proposal. Giving a talk at this conference is really a great way of getting feedback about what you’re doing, raising awareness about a particular project or issue, and generally meeting other developers interested in similar topics.

It is worth mentioning that for those people whose talk is accepted, the entrance ticket is free. For hobbyists working on their own on open-source projects, the Linux Foundation also has the possibility of funding travel to the conference.

Bootlin team back from ELCE and Linux Plumbers

As we announced in an earlier blog post, the entire Bootlin engineering team was at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe and Linux Plumbers Conference last week in Düsseldorf.

Bootlin engineering team at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2014
Bootlin engineering team at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2014. From left to right, Grégory Clement, Alexandre Belloni, Maxime Ripard, Antoine Ténart, Thomas Petazzoni, Boris Brezillon and Michael Opdenacker.

In addition to attending many talks, meeting developers of the embedded Linux community and therefore keeping us up-to-date with the most recent developments in this domain, we also gave a number of talks, for which the slides are now available:

Boris Brezillon giving his DRM/KMS talk
Boris Brezillon giving his DRM/KMS talk
Maxime Ripard giving his Allwinner kernel talk
Maxime Ripard giving his Allwinner kernel talk
Thomas Petazzoni giving his Buildroot talk
Thomas Petazzoni giving his Buildroot talk
At the social event, from left to right: Grégory Clement (Bootlin), Kevin Hilman (Linaro), Boris Brezillon (Bootlin), Maxime Ripard (Bootlin)
At the social event, from left to right: Grégory Clement (Bootlin), Kevin Hilman (Linaro), Boris Brezillon (Bootlin), Maxime Ripard (Bootlin)

All the slides of the conference are also available on the event site of the Linux Foundation, and all talks have been video-recorded by the Linux Foundation so hopefully videos should become available in the near future.

Videos from Embedded Linux Conference 2014

San Jose, CaliforniaAs the summer is coming to an end, we finally managed to publish the videos we recorded during the last Embedded Linux Conference, held earlier this year in San Jose, California.

This year, the Linux Foundation was only recording the audio of the talks, and we’ve been recording the video only for a few talks. Sorry to all the speakers that won’t be able to see their footage, but we were not able to attend (and record) all of the talks this year. Still, we include below the links to all the talks, slides and their audio recording, in order to cover all of this year’s schedule.

Our videos

Alan OttVideo capture
Signal 11 Software
USB and the Real World
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (49 minutes):
full HD (365M), 800×450 (224M)

Alexandre BelloniVideo capture
Bootlin
Using Yocto for Modules Manufacturers
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (56 minutes):
full HD (421M), 800×450 (224M)

David Anders, Matt RanostayVideo capture
CircuitCo, Intel
Hardware Debugging Tools, Sigrok: Using Logic to Debug Logic
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (42 minutes):
full HD (314M), 800×450 (223M)

David Anders, Matt Porter, Matt Ranostay, Karim YaghmourVideo capture
CircuitCo, Linaro, Intel, Opersys
Debugging – Panel Discussion
Audio Recording
Video (43 minutes):
full HD (322M), 800×450 (228M)

Gregory ClementVideo capture
Bootlin
SMP Bring Up On ARM SOCs
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (48 minutes):
full HD (359M), 800×450 (253M)

Linus WalleijVideo capture
Linaro
Fear and Loathing in the Media Transfer Protocol
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (55 minutes):
full HD (414M), 800×450 (224M)

Martti PiirainenVideo capture
Tieto
Productizing Telephony and Audio in a GNU/Linux (Sailfish OS) Smartphone
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (46 minutes):
full HD (343M), 800×450 (204M)

Matt PorterVideo capture
Linaro
Debugging – Linux Kernel Testing
Audio Recording
Video (47 minutes):
full HD (357M), 800×450 (254M)

Matt PorterVideo capture
Linaro
Kernel USB Gadget Configfs Interface
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (42 minutes):
full HD (317M), 800×450 (224M)

Maxime RipardVideo capture
Bootlin
Supporting a New ARM Platform: The Allwinner SoCs Example
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (48 minutes):
full HD (364M), 800×450 (203M)

Micheal E AndersonVideo capture
The PTR Group, Inc.
Extending Linux using Arduinos
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (57 minutes):
full HD (430M), 800×450 (230M)

Michael OpdenackerVideo capture
Bootlin
Update on Boot Time Reduction Techniques with Figures
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (45 minutes):
full HD (340M), 800×450 (198M)

Thomas PetazzoniVideo capture
Bootlin
Buildroot: What’s New?
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (52 minutes):
full HD (392M), 800×450 (278M)

Thomas PetazzoniVideo capture
Bootlin
Two Years of ARM SoC Support mainlining: Lessons Learned
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (52 minutes):
full HD (388M), 800×450 (221M)

Tomasz FigaVideo capture
Samsung R&D Institute
Trees need care: A Solution to Device Tree Validation Problem
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (50 minutes):
full HD (377M), 800×450 (234M)

Tristan LelongVideo capture
Adeneo Embedded
Linux Quickboot
Slides
Audio Recording
Video (54 minutes):
full HD (406M), 800×450 (288M)

Other talks

Adrian Perez de Castro
Igalia
Improving Performance Of A WebKit Port MIPS Platform
Slides
Audio Recording

Adrien Verge
Ecole Polytechnique Montreal
Hardware-Assisted Software Tracing
Slides
Audio Recording

Behan Webster
Converse in Code Inc.
LLVMLinux: Embracing the Dragon
Slides
Audio Recording

Belen Barros Pena
Intel’s Open Source Technology Center
Building Tools From the Outside In: Bringing User-Centered Design to Embedded Linux
Slides
Audio Recording

Bradley M. Kuhn
Software Freedom Conservancy
Collaborative GPL Enforcement Through Non-Profit Entities
Slides
Audio Recording

Joe Kontur
Panasonic
CE Workgroup (BoFs)
Audio Recording

Chase Maupin
Texas Instruments
Using Agile Development Practices For Kernel Development
Audio Recording

Chris Simmonds
2net
A Timeline For Embedded Linux
Audio Recording

David Anders, Tim Bird, Matt Porter, Benjamin Zores, Karim Yaghmour
CircuitCo, Sony Mobile, Linaro, Alcatel-Lucent, OperSys
Keynote Panel: IoT and the Role of Embedded Linux and Android
Audio Recording

David Greaves
Mer Project
The #qt/#wayland/#systemd/#btrfs-phone … the Jolla phone
Slides
Audio Recording

Denys Dmytriyenko
Texas Instruments
Qt5 & Yocto – adding SDK and easy app migration from Qt4
Slides
Audio Recording

Gabriel Huau
Adeneo Embedded
Hardware Accelerated Video Streaming with V4L2
Slides
Audio Recording

Geert Uytterhoeven
Glider bvba
Engaging Device Trees
Slides
Audio Recording

Hans Verkuil
Cisco Systems Norway
An Introduction to the Video4Linux Framework
Slides
Audio Recording

Hisao Munakata, Tsugikazu Shibata
Renesas Electronics, NEC
LTSI Project Update for 3.10 Kernel and Future Plan
Audio Recording

Insop Song
Gainspeed
Can A Board Bringing Up Be Less Painful, if with Yocto and Linux?
Slides
Audio Recording

Iyad Qumei
LG Electronics
webOS, An Openembedded Use Case
Slides
Audio Recording

Jeff Osier-Mixon
Intel Corporation
Yocto Project / OpenEmbedded BoF
Audio Recording

Josh Cartwright
Qualcomm Innovation Center
System Power Management Interface (SPMI)
Audio Recording

Khem Raj
Juniper Networks
(Tutorial) Some GCC Optimizations for Embedded Software
Slides
Audio Recording

Laurent Pinchart
Renesas Linux Kernel Team
Mastering the DMA and IOMMU APIs
Slides
Audio Recording

John ‘Warthog9’ Hawley, Nitin Kamble
Intel
Making a Splash: Digital Signage Powered by MinnowBoard and the Yocto Project
Slides
Audio Recording

Mark Brown
Linaro
What’s going on with SPI
Audio Recording

Mark Skarpness
Intel
Keynote: Scaling Android at the Speed of Mobility
Audio Recording

Marta Rybczynska
Kalray
Porting Linux to a New Architecture
Slides
Audio Recording

Michael Christofferson
Enea
User Space Drivers in Linux ? Pros, Cons, and Implementation Issues
Audio Recording

Michael E Anderson
The PTR Group, Inc.
How to Build a Linux-Based Robot
Slides
Audio Recording

Minchan Kim
LG Electronics
Volatile Ranges
Audio Recording

Tim Bird
Sony Mobile
(BoFs) QCOM SoC Mainlining
Audio Recording

Patrick Titiano
BayLibre
Use-Case Power Management Optimization: Identifying & Tracking Key Power Indicators
Slides
Audio Recording

Philip Balister
OpenSDR
Open-Source Tools for Software-Defined Radio on Multicore ARM+DSP
Slides
Audio Recording

Ricardo Salveti de Araujo
Ubuntu Touch low level stack
Ubuntu Touch Internals
Slides
Audio Recording

Thomas Petazzoni
Bootlin
Device Tree for Dummies
Slides
Audio Recording

Tim Bird
Sony Mobile
Keynote: The Paradox of embedded and Open Source
Slides
Audio Recording

Tom Zanussi
Intel’s Open Source Technology Center
MicroYocto and the ‘Internet of Tiny’
Slides
Audio Recording

Victor Rodriguez
Intel
Introducing Embedded Linux to Universities
Slides
Audio Recording

Vitaly Wool
Softprise Consulting OU
Linux for Microcontrollers: Spreading the Disease
Slides
Audio Recording

Wolfgang Mauerer
Siemens
Understanding the Embedded Linux Ecosystem with Codeface
Slides
Audio Recording

Yoshitake Kobayashi
Toshiba
Using Real-Time Patch with LTSI Kernel
Slides
Audio Recording

Embedded Linux Development with Yocto Project

Embedded Linux Development with Yocto Project Cover

We were kindly provided a copy of Embedded Linux Development with Yocto Project, written by Otavio Salvador and Daiane Angolini. It is available at Packt Publishing, either in an electronic format (DRM free) or printed.

This book will help you start with your embedded system development and integration using the Yocto Project or OpenEmbedded.

The first chapter sheds some light on the meaning of commonly misused names: Yocto Project, Poky, OpenEmbedded, BitBake. Then, it doesn’t waste time and explains how to install and use Poky to build and then run an image. The entire book is full of examples that can easily be tested, providing useful hands-on experience, using Yocto Project 1.6 (Poky 11).

The following chapters cover:

  • Hob: a user friendly interface, however, it will soon be deprecated and replaced by Toaster.
  • BitBake and Metadata: how to use BitBake, how to write recipes for packages or images, how to extend existing recipes, how to write new classes, how to create a layer, where to find existing layers and use them.
  • The build directory layout: what the generated files are, and what their use is.
  • Packaging: how to generate different package formats, how to handle a package feed and the package versions.
  • The various SDKs that can be generated and their integration in Eclipse.
  • Debugging the metadata: what the common issues are, how to find what is going wrong, and solving these issues.
  • Debugging the applications on the target: how to generate an image with debugging tools installed.
  • Available tools to help achieve copyleft compliance: in particular, how to cope with the GPL requirements.

Finally, there is a chapter dedicated to explaining how to generate and run an image on the Wandboard, an i.MX6 based community board.

The book is easy to read, with plenty of examples and useful tips. It requires some knowledge about generic embedded Linux system development (see our training) as only the Yocto Project specifics are covered. I would recommend it both for beginners wanting to learn about the Yocto Project and for developers wanting to improve their current knowledge and their recipes and also understand the BitBake internals.

Speaking of the Yocto Project, it is worth noting that Bootlin is now offering a Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded training course (detailed agenda). If you’re interested, join one of the upcoming public training sessions, or order a session at your location!

Bootlin at the Embedded Linux Conference Europe

DüsseldorfThe Embedded Linux Conference Europe will take place on October 13-15 in Düsseldorf, Germany. As usual, a large part of the Bootlin engineering team will participate to the conference, with no less than 7 engineers: Alexandre Belloni, Boris Brezillon, Grégory Clement, Michael Opdenacker, Thomas Petazzoni, Maxime Ripard and Antoine Ténart.

Several of our talk proposals have been accepted, so we’ll be presenting about the following topics:

In addition to this participation to the Embedded Linux Conference Europe:

  • Many of us will also participate to the Linux Plumbers conference, on October 15-17. It’s another great opportunity to talk about topics around real-time, power management, storage, multimedia, and more.
  • Thomas Petazzoni will participate to the next Buildroot Developers Meeting.

As usual, we’re looking forward to this event! Do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you’re interested in meeting us during these events for specific discussions.

Embedded Linux training update: Atmel Xplained, and more!

Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained boardWe are happy to announce that we have published a significant update of our Embedded Linux training course. As all our training materials, this update is freely available for everyone, under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA) license.

This update brings the following major improvements to the training session:

  • The hardware platform used for all the practical labs is the Atmel SAMA5D3 Xplained platform, a popular platform that features the ARMv7 compatible Atmel SAMA5D3 processor on a board with expansion headers compatible with Arduino shields. The fact that the platform is very well supported by the mainline Linux kernel, and the easy access to a wide range of Arduino shields makes it a very useful prototyping platform for many projects. Of course, as usual, participants to our public training sessions keep their board after the end of the course! Note we continue to support the IGEPv2 board from ISEE for customers who prefer this option.
  • The practical labs that consist in Cross-compiling third party libraries and applications and Working with Buildroot now use a USB audio device connected to the Xplained board on the hardware side, and various audio libraries/applications on the software side. This replaces our previous labs which were using DirectFB as an example of a graphical library used in a system emulated under QEMU. We indeed believe that practical labs on real hardware are much more interesting and exciting.
  • Many updates were made to various software components used in the training session: the toolchain components were all updated and we now use a hard float toolchain, more recent U-Boot and Linux kernel versions are used, etc.

The training materials are available as pre-compiled PDF (slides, labs, agenda), but their source code in also available in our Git repository.

If you are interested in this training session, see the dates of our public training sessions, or order one to be held at your location. Do not hesitate to contact us at training@bootlin.com for further details!

It is worth mentioning that for the purpose of the development of this training session, we did a few contributions to open-source projects:

Thanks a lot to our engineers Maxime Ripard and Alexandre Belloni, who worked on this major update of our training session.

Embedded Linux course in Madrid – July 7-11

We are happy to announce a new Embedded Linux training course on July 7-11, in Madrid, Spain.

IGEPv2 boardIt is organized by our partners ISEE (the makers of the IGEPv2 board that we are using in this course), and Silica, a well known component is distributor who is welcoming the session in its offices in Madrid.

The course will be instructed in English by our trainer Marcin Bis. Marcin Bis

The registrations are directly handled by ISEE. See details.

Bootlin at Embedded World 2014, Nuremberg, Germany

Embedded World 2014, Germany

Embedded World is the world’s largest trade show about embedded systems. In 2013, it attracted around 900 exhibitors, over 22,000 visitors and almost 1,500 congress participants.

This year, Bootlin will be represented by our CEO Michael Opdenacker. This should be a great opportunity for us to understand our customers better, by meeting embedded system makers, by seeing what their needs are and what technologies they use. It will also be an opportunity to meet well known members of the technical community. In particular, here are a few well know people who are going to speak at the congress:

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are attending this event too and are interested in knowing Bootlin better, for business, partnership or even career opportunities!

New training materials: boot time reduction workshop

We are happy to release new training materials that we have developed in 2013 with funding from Atmel Corporation.

The materials correspond to a 1-day embedded Linux boot time reduction workshop. In addition to boot time reduction theory, consolidating some of our experience from our embedded Linux boot time reduction projects, the workshop allows participants to practice with the most common techniques. This is done on SAMA5D3x Evaluation Kits from Atmel.

The system to optimize is a video demo from Atmel. We reduce the time to start a GStreamer based video player. During the practical labs, you will practice with techniques to:

  • Measure the various steps of the boot process
  • Analyze time spent starting system services, using bootchartd
  • Simplify your init scripts
  • Trace application startup with strace
  • Find kernel functions taking the most time during the boot process
  • Reduce kernel size and boot time
  • Replace U-Boot by the Barebox bootloader, and save a lot of time
    thanks to the activation of the data cache.

Creative commonsAs usual, our training materials are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. This essentially means that you are free to download, distribute and even modify them, provided you mention us as the original authors and that you share these documents under the same conditions.

Special thanks to Atmel for allowing us to share these new materials under this license!

Here are the documents at last:

The first public session of this workshop will be announced in the next weeks.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are interested in organizing a session on your site.