RedBoot is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 application

Application software

Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

 that uses the eCos

ECos

eCos is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements of run-time performance and hardware needs...

 real-time operating system

Real-time operating system

A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...

 Hardware Abstraction Layer to provide bootstrap firmware

Firmware

In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...

 for embedded system

Embedded system

An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...

s. RedBoot is used in both product development and in deployed products in the field, such as the entertainment systems on the Airbus A380

Airbus A380

The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine jet airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS. It is the largest passenger airliner in the world. Due to its size, many airports had to modify and improve facilities to accommodate it...

s and Delta's Boeing 767.

RedBoot allows download and execution of embedded applications via serial

Serial communications

In telecommunication and computer science, serial communication is the process of sending data one bit at a time, sequentially, over a communication channel or computer bus. This is in contrast to parallel communication, where several bits are sent as a whole, on a link with several parallel channels...

 or Ethernet

Ethernet

Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....

, including embedded Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 and eCos

ECos

eCos is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to precise application requirements of run-time performance and hardware needs...

 applications. It provides debug support in conjunction with GDB

GNU Debugger

The GNU Debugger, usually called just GDB and named gdb as an executable file, is the standard debugger for the GNU software system. It is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Objective-C, Free Pascal, Fortran, Java...

 to allow development and debugging of embedded applications. It also provides an interactive command line interface to allow management of the Flash

Flash memory

Flash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...

 images, image download, RedBoot configuration, etc., accessible via serial or Ethernet. For unattended or automated startup, boot scripts can be stored in Flash allowing for example loading of images from Flash, hard disk, or a TFTP

Trivial File Transfer Protocol

Trivial File Transfer Protocol is a file transfer protocol known for its simplicity. It is generally used forautomated transfer of configuration or boot files between machines in a local environment....

server.

External links

• http://ecos.sourceware.org/redboot/
• http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecos/redboot.shtml