Internet of Things Platform on ARM/FPGA Using Embedded Linux

As the demand for smarter gadget in small form factor and the prediction of Internet of Things as the next big thing, the role of embedded systems in our daily lives become more prominent. In embedded system, Yocto project has started to become synonymous with embedded Linux due to its multi architecture support. As for the hardware, the flexibility and low cost of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) make it as an attractive choice for implementation of embedded Linux. This project is to show how the flexibility of the FPGA can be used as hardware for booting up an embedded operating system. The chosen board, Altera DE1-SoC has an onboard hard ARM Cortex-A9, which is needed to drive the Yocto Linux. The Yocto Linux is stored in Secure Digital (SD) card and can be accessed via the onboard SD card reader. Finally, the FPGA-based system is able to access the hardware on the Linux-system using device drivers for the common parallel I/O hardware and user applications to read/write or from the devices.

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