Introduction

Prior and Related Work

Hardware / Software

Embeded Xinu Video #1

Embeded Xinu Video #2

Project pictures

Software

We have ported the venerable Xinu operating system to the embedded MIPS32 processor, and have built appropriate device drivers for several of the key peripherals on the WRT54GL platform. The source code is freely available
under a BSD-style license from the Embedded Xinu web portal.

 

Our embedded O/S kernel is small but elegant, and designed to be completely fathomable in a short time by undergraduates working for the rst time on embedded systems. The layers of the Embedded Xinu kernel are shown in below figure, and include all of the components normally found in an embedded operating system.
Our software can be compiled using freely-available crosscompiler tools that are readily available from the web and mainstream Linux distributions. In the stand-alone conguration, all that is required for software is a cross-compiler and a TFTP server, another component that is freely-available for all of the major desktop operating systems.

For a dedicated pool of backends, additional connection software is required to allocate routers to remote users and to manage special-purpose hardware for remote power control and the large number of serial console connections required. The Embedded Xinu portal supplies parts lists and conguration information for remote power control and networkattached serial annexes; we also supply open source tools for managing the remote connections and controlling the dedicated backend pool.

The MU Systems Laboratory contains a dedicated pool of two dozen backend target routers used for our embedded systems courses and others. The high-level overview of the pool is shown in Figure 1; additional details are available
online.

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