How to bring up the Linux Kernel on a new platform

In one line

A guide to bringing up the Linux Kernel and a userspace application on a new hardware (or in this case, a self-made emulator)

Opening excerpt

Many embedded systems these days run Linux as their operating system. Generally because it’s a great foundation to run anything you like on top of and because many great developers and manufacturers already took care of writing drivers for all kinds of hardware components.

Even though this makes building the finished project much easier, if you’re dealing with custom hardware, you will most likely still have to bring up the Linux kernel on your own initially. This post is about just that: Setting up the bare minimal to get Linux running on a new platform. In this case, the new platform is not a new PCB but a minimal, emulated RISC-V CPU.

Even though Linux is a very complex piece of software, it doesn’t actually have that many requirements to run. The only thing it really needs in terms of hardware is:

Memory Management Unit A piece of hardware on the SoC that handles translating virtual addresses to physical addresses, allowing for isolation between multiple different userspace processes and the Kernel Enough RAM to, at least, load the Kernel, a Device Tree and an initramfs.

(Excerpted from the original; full article via the source link below.)

This story hit the Hacker News front page today (53 points / 4 comments, via werwolv.net). Our Tech Radar aggregates daily signals on AI engineering, backend architecture and DevOps — browse the related services and further reading below, or get in touch with our team.