Utilizing Linux Kernel Components in K42

Overview

This paper discusses how K42 uses Linux-kernel components to support a wide range of hardware, a full-featured TCP/IP stack and Linux le-systems. An examination of the run-time environment within the Linux-kernel is the starting point for a presentation of the strategy taken to incorporate Linux-kernel code in K42. There are four basic aspects of this strategy; presenting K42 as an architecture target for Linux-kernel code, developing interfaces allowing K42 code to call Linux-kernel code, implementing some Linux-kernel internal interfaces using K42 facilities and selectively building Linux-kernel code to include only the desired components. Of these four aspects the first is the most technically interesting and is the focus of most of this paper.