With
the ever-rising practicality and popularity of the IoT market, firmware
development, which helps set IoT devices in motion, becomes a highly demanded
project effort. The one that requires a knowledgeable, expertise-driven
approach. Firmware development is a complex process that brings advanced
results. Need to equip your hardware with low-level software to enable its
operation and control it? We have just the specialists for you at SHANKRA
R&D
FIRMWARE
DEVELOPMENT - INS AND OUTS
Firmware is “hard”
software that resides in the system’s RAM with instructions and data for it
loaded from permanent memory. Instructions used in your solution are adjusted
by changing the data stored in memory.
Firmware is
considered “hard” because its instructions stored on a physical device are
usually loaded into a hardware platform for long-term performance, with only
minor further tweaks involved.
The principal
difference between firmware and software is more about functionality specifics.
Firmware is a system component that can be customized to define new system
functions that can only be implemented within the constraints of the given
hardware and firmware.
The environment for
embedded firmware development differs significantly from test and production
environments. Firmware development engineers can use specialized software
stacks, different chip architectures, and even operating systems. The embedded
system allows to significantly facilitate the circuitry and hence reduce
project costs and hardware size.
In a nutshell, however, embedded
firmware development is not so different from the process of developing
“standard” software. Regardless of the development/management model used, it
consists of the following stages:
- Requirements analysis;
- Design and algorithm composing;
- Firmware coding;
- System testing.
Embedded OS
In essence, an embedded system is a combination of software and hardware. The
Embedded Computing Platform combines hardware based on a microprocessor or
microcontroller and a firmware OS that enables actuators and sensors to perform
tasks.
A standard OS is about the interaction between human
users with computers. In turn, an embedded system performs a limited scope of
tasks with minimum human involvement.
A firmware engineer creates a set of instructions – a
device-activating algorithm. One or more processing cores power up embedded
systems – microcontrollers or digital signal processors, FPGAs or ASIC. During
the firmware development process, microprocessors or microcontrollers of
embedded system hardware are programmed to perform specific tasks based on the
previously composed set of instructions.
Basically, firmware converts microprocessor commands
into signals readable by hardware components while microcontrollers enable
system performance alterations. To implement significant algorithm changes, the
firmware code must be rewritten.
High-level languages like C++ or Python and low-level
ones like Assembler are used in the firmware development process. The most
widely used underlying platforms are Linux and Android.
