You're reading from Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

Product typeBook

Published inMay 2021

PublisherPackt

ISBN-139781789530384

Edition3rd Edition

Concepts

Embedded Systems

Authors (2):

Frank Vasquez

Chris Simmonds

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Accessing flash memory from Linux

Raw NOR and NAND flash memory is handled by the Memory Technology Device subsystem, or MTD, which provides you with basic interfaces to read, erase, and write blocks of flash memory. In the case of NAND flash, there are also functions that handle the OOB area and are used to identify bad blocks.

For managed flash, you need drivers to handle a particular hardware interface. MMC/SD cards and eMMC use the mmcblk driver, while CompactFlash and hard drives use the SCSI disk driver, sd. USB flash drives use the usb_storage driver, together with the
sd driver.

Memory technology devices

The MTD subsystem was started by David Woodhouse in 1999 and has been extensively developed over the intervening years. In this section, I will concentrate on the way it handles the two main technologies, NOR and NAND flash.

MTD consists of three layers: a core set of functions, a set of drivers for various types of chips, and user-level drivers that present the...

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Mastering Embedded Linux Programming - Third Edition

Published in: May 2021Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781789530384

Authors (2)

Frank Vasquez

Frank Vasquez is an independent software consultant specializing in consumer electronics. He has over a decade of experience designing and building embedded Linux systems. During that time, he has shipped numerous devices including a rackmount DSP audio server, a diver-held sonar camcorder, and a consumer IoT hotspot. Before his career as an embedded Linux engineer, Frank was a database kernel developer at IBM where he worked on DB2. He lives in Silicon Valley.
Read more about Frank Vasquez

Chris Simmonds

Chris Simmonds is a software consultant and trainer living in southern England. He has almost two decades of experience in designing and building open-source embedded systems. He is the founder and chief consultant at 2net Ltd, which provides professional training and mentoring services in embedded Linux, Linux device drivers, and Android platform development. He has trained engineers at many of the biggest companies in the embedded world, including ARM, Qualcomm, Intel, Ericsson, and General Dynamics. He is a frequent presenter at open source and embedded conferences, including the Embedded Linux Conference and Embedded World.
Read more about Chris Simmonds

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