Background
We at ADI have held a strong focus on the emerging Embedded Linux domains offering our Linux expertise in the key development areas of device drivers, system software and systems integration over a range of embedded Linux platforms. This particular solution in focus here is a custom Embedded Linux Distribution system targeted at offering customer specific features and functionalities as compared to off-the-shelf commercial Distributions systems.

Business Requirement
Our customer is a major Mobile-Wireless solution provider who has shared a long association with us over the development of some very successful mobile and wireless solutions. The current requirement was to test and enhance the functionality and portability of an existing application (developed in QTE) along with its associated components and drivers (developed in C), with the base platform shift from WinCE to GNU/Linux.

Technologies and Expertise
Our team of Linux engineers designed and developed a bare minimal, compact (under 16mb) Linux distribution system, targeted at low resource embedded hardware. This system was based on Linux Kernel 2.4, Busybox, uClibc and QtE (runtime libraries).

With our prior experiences and clear understanding of XScale processor architecture, we were able to efficiently execute the above activities. We used a QtE/C based rapid application development environment for the target hardware with the ability to cross-compile existing applications for distribution over different platforms.

Customer Benefits
» Complete customization control
Since our development was a total in-house effort starting with the very basic kernel component, the customer had complete customization control over the system. This in-turn immensely helped the application testing and also expedited the debugging and resolution of issues found during the testing. in-turn immensely helped the Application Testing and also expedited the debugging and resolution of any issues found during the Testing Process.