Название: Firmware Development: A Guide to Specialized Systemic Knowledge
Автор: Subrata Banik, Vincent Zimmer
Издательство: Apress
Год: 2022
Страниц: 423
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true), epub
Размер: 13.8 MB, 19.7 MB

Build your own system firmware. This book helps you understand system firmware architecture and minimalistic design, and provides a specialized knowledge of firmware development.

The book includes guidance on understanding the system firmware build procedure, integrating pieces of firmware and allowing configuration, updating system firmware, creating a development infrastructure for allowing multi-party collaboration in firmware development, and gaining advanced system firmware debugging knowledge.

Firmware is the first piece of code that runs on the target hardware after the end user has turned on a device. Depending on the types of target hardware, the operations being performed by the firmware may differ, but the fundamental operations of firmware remain the same across the target hardware: performing the bare minimal hardware initialization and either waiting for host-centric communication to initiate or handing off control to the high-level system software that allows the end-user interaction. Based on the target market segment, an OS can have multiple virtual machines, and/or various types of applications are installed that satisfy the end-user needs. Although the control goes to the OS, an instance of the firmware is still alive and available to manage a few critical tasks that for OS-based applications or drivers cannot perform.

We wrote this book for people who want to learn about the future of firmware and prepare themselves with all required knowledge to excel. This book covers the essential knowledge that is required for a firmware developer, debug engineer, testing or validation engineer or even someone is working in a project as a DevOps engineer. Chapters 2 to 4 cover the specialized systematic knowledge needed for firmware development. Chapter 6 illustrates the concepts that are relevant for future development and can be learned by analyzing end-user use-case scenarios. The concepts presented as part of this book are based on practical results, and the data illustrates why we believe those ideas will definitely merge into the product line in the future. We present a large number of examples that are aligned to system firmware development as many developers have visibility into this area compared to other firmware developments.

After reading the book you will be able to assume better control while developing your own firmware and know how to interact with native hardware while debugging. You will understand key principles for future firmware development using newer technology, and be ready for the introduction of modern safe programming languages for firmware development. Detailed system firmware development case studies using a futuristic approach cover:

Future scalable system firmware development models
Types of firmware development (system firmware, device firmware, manageability firmware)
Tools and their usage while creating system firmware
How to build infrastructure for seamless firmware development using a multi-party development model
Debugging methodologies used during various phases of firmware product development
Setting up key expectations for future firmware, including thinner firmware footprints and faster execution time, easier configuration, and increased transparent security

What You Will Learn:

Understand the system firmware working model of the future
Gain knowledge to say goodbye to proprietary firmware for different types of firmware development
Know the different types of tools required for creating firmware source code before flashing the final image into the boot device of the embedded system
Develop skills to understand the failure in firmware or in the system and prepare the debugging environment to root cause the defects
Discern the platform minimal security requirement
Optimize the system firmware boot time based on the target hardware requirement
Comprehend the product development cycle using open source firmware development

Who This Book Is For:
Embedded firmware and software engineers migrating the product development from closed source firmware to open source firmware for product adaptation needs as well as engineers working for open source firmware development. A secondary audience includes engineers working on various bootloaders such as open source firmware, UEFI, and Slim Bootloader development, as well as undergraduate and graduate students working on developing firmware skill sets.