While things have gotten a lot better, new hardware bring-up sometimes still feels like pulling teeth. With the right methodology, tools and techniques, a significant amount of time, energy (and sanity) can be saved while enabling a new board to run Linux. In this talk, we'll discuss the phased process involved in new board bring-up and the challenges it can pose, from reviewing initial schematic design to the successful upstreaming of any necessary bootloader and kernel patches. We'll also provide some examples of the process based on a board that was recently made compatible with mainline.
This presentation will help embedded hardware and software developers better understand the problems they can face during the bring-up of a board and will hopefully encourage them to work together when designing a new embedded board. Cooperation is important during the demanding work of a board bring-up in order to avoid respins of the board as much as possible as well as save time and money.
The audience is anyone interested in the ‘fuzzy’ line between hardware and software, with the focus being hardware and software developers working on kernel drivers and hardware bring-up. Attendees can expect a description on how to bring-up a new board, including tips to take into account in the schematic design phase and much more.