Getting a part booted is an entirely different ordeal altogether - that’s what we’ll be focused on.
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Your I2C drivers, your GPIO calls - even your V4L-based image processing code - will all work seamlessly.Īt least, that’s the sales pitch. That makes chips running embedded Linux almost a commodity product: as long as your processor checks off the right boxes, your application code won’t know if it’s running on an ST or a Microchip part - even if one of those is a brand-new dual-core Cortex-A7 and the other is an old ARM9.
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If my mantra for the microcontroller article was that you should pick the right part for the job and not be afraid to learn new software ecosystems, my argument for this post is even simpler: once you’re booted into Linux on basically any of these parts, they become identical development environments. Just like my microcontroller article, the parts I picked range from the well-worn horses that have pulled along products for the better part of this decade, to fresh-faced ICs with intriguing capabilities that you can keep up your sleeve. This article is targeted at embedded engineers who are familiar with microcontrollers but not with microprocessors or Linux, so I wanted to put together something with a quick primer on why you’d want to run embedded Linux, a broad overview of what’s involved in designing around application processors, and then a dive into some specific parts you should check out - and others you should avoid - for entry-level embedded Linux systems. There’s an occult consortium of engineering pros who drop these chips into designs with utter confidence, while the uninitiated cower for their Raspberry Pis and overpriced industrial SOMs. Massive shifts over the last few years have seen internet-connected devices become more featureful (and hopefully, more secure), and I’m finding myself putting Linux into more and more places.Īmong beginner engineers, application processors supplicate reverence: one minor PCB bug and your $10,000 prototype becomes a paperweight. List of comparisons: Allwinner AMD AMD A10 AMD A12 AMD A4 AMD A6 AMD A8 AMD A9 AMD Athlon AMD Athlon 64 AMD Athlon 64 X2 AMD Athlon Gold AMD Athlon Silver AMD EPYC AMD Jaguar AMD Opteron AMD Phenom AMD Ryzen AMD Ryzen 1000 AMD Ryzen 2000 AMD Ryzen 3 AMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD Ryzen 3000 AMD Ryzen 4000 AMD Ryzen 5 AMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD Ryzen 5000 AMD Ryzen 6000 AMD Ryzen 7 AMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD Ryzen 9 AMD RyAMD RyAMD RyAMD Ryzen Threadripper AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1000 AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2000 AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3000 AMD Ryzen Threadripper 5000 AMD Zen AMD Zen 2 AMD Zen 3 AMD Zen+ Amlogic Apple ARM ARM Cortex ARM Cortex-A17 ARM Cortex-A35 ARM Cortex-A53 ARM Cortex-A55 ARM Cortex-A57 ARM Cortex-A7 ARM Cortex-A72 ARM Cortex-A73 ARM Cortex-A75 ARM Cortex-A76 ARM Cortex-A8 ARM Cortex-A9 ARM920T AutoChips Broadcom Deca core Dodeca core Dual AMD Dual AMD EPYC Dual AMD Opteron Dual core Dual Intel Xeon Dual Intel Xeon Platinum Hexa core Hexadeca core HiSilicon HiSilicon Kirin Icosi core Ingenic Intel Intel Atom Intel Broadwell Intel Cascade Lake Intel Cascade Lake-X Intel Celeron Intel Coffee Lake Intel Comet Lake Intel Core Intel Core 10000 Intel Core 11000 Intel Core 12000 Intel Core 2 Duo Intel Core 2 Quad Intel Core 7000 Intel Core 8000 Intel Core 9000 Intel Core i3 Intel Core i3-10000 Intel Core i3-11000 Intel Core i3-12000 Intel Core i3-6000 Intel Core i3-7000 Intel Core i3-8000 Intel Core i3-9000 Intel Core i5 Intel Core i5-10000 Intel Core i5-11000 Intel Core i5-12000 Intel Core i5-4000 Intel Core i5-6000 Intel Core i5-7000 Intel Core i5-8000 Intel Core i5-9000 Intel Core i7 Intel Core i7-10000 Intel Core i7-11000 Intel Core i7-12000 Intel Core i7-6000 Intel Core i7-7000 Intel Core i7-8000 Intel Core i7-9000 Intel Core i9 Intel Core i9-10000 Intel Core i9-11000 Intel Core i9-12000 Intel Core i9-7000 Intel Core i9-8000 Intel Core i9-9000 Intel Core m3 Intel Haswell Intel Ice Lake Intel Ivy Bridge Intel Kaby Lake Intel Pentium Intel Pentium 4 Intel Pentium Gold Intel Pentium II Intel Pentium III Intel Rocket Lake Intel Sandy Bridge Intel Skylake Intel Skylake-X Intel Tiger Lake Intel Xeon Intel Xeon E5 Intel Xeon Gold Intel Xeon Platinum Intel Xeon W LGA1150 LGA1151 MediaTek MediaTek Dimensity Microsoft Mono core Nvidia Nvidia Tegra NXP NXP i.MX NXP i.MX 8 NXP i.MX 8M NXP i.After I published my $1 MCU write-up, several readers suggested I look at application processors - the MMU-endowed chips necessary to run real operating systems like Linux. 2K-bit EFUSE, SID, TrustZone, Security Boot