October - 2003 issue > Technology

Author: Inder Singh

OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE HAS ACHIEVED unprecedented popularity in recent years, especially with the rapid growth in the use of the Linux operating system. Much of the attention received by Linux has been focused on its growing use in enterprise server applications, as an alternative to Microsoft Windows and Unix systems from Sun, IBM and others. A growing body of complimentary open source products such as the Apache web server, PHP and MySQL database are being used widely to provide comprehensive open source solutions.

In parallel with this growing interest in Linux in the server market, there has been a phenomenal growth in the use of Linux and related open source products in the exploding embedded market, which has not received as much attention. Embedded products, which contain a microprocessor and software dedicated to a single purpose, range from telephone switches and network routers to medical instruments, consumer entertainment products and missile control systems.

New applications for embedded intelligence are appearing in more and more areas. The silicon industry, riding Moore’s Law, constantly drives down the cost of processors and memory. As MIPS and megabytes become less and less expensive, it creates a very compelling case for designing embedded processors and software into every conceivable product. Even during the recent economic downturn, we have continued to see many new embedded products in areas like hand-held and wireless consumer products, powerful networked military systems, and emerging biotechnology applications. We are moving toward a world of pervasive computing, with intelligent products surrounding us at home, in the workplace, in our cars, and on our person as we go about our lives.

At the same time, the complexity of embedded software is skyrocketing. Developing all these new embedded systems on schedule and at an affordable cost is a growing challenge that Linux and complementary open source software are helping to solve. The embedded world differs from mainstream computing in the diversity of processor architectures and many different proprietary embedded operating systems. One result of this is the scarcity of off-the-shelf software packages. Most embedded software is designed from scratch, although this is starting to change.

The phenomenal growth in the use of embedded Linux has been driven by many compelling benefits offered by Linux over other traditional proprietary embedded operating systems. Developers like having access to the source code at no cost and there are no royalty fees for incorporating Linux into their products. With the rapid growth in the popularity of Linux as an open multi-vendor system, there is a growing base of software, both open source and licensed products, available under Linux, which is helping to reduce the engineers’ development efforts. In comparison to other proprietary real-time operating systems (RTOSs), Linux supports a wide variety of hardware devices, from CPUs to network and graphics chips and boards. The semiconductor industry, led by Intel, is supporting Linux to provide out-of-the-box software support for new devices, which can be freely distributed as open source. One can usually find a driver for any new device on the web for Linux well before it is widely supported by RTOS vendors.

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