Booting ARM Linux from Device Tree
Lei Zhou, Mingxin Zhang, Guo Sheng-chao · International Conference on Business Computing and Global Informatization · 2013
Device Tree (DT) support becomes the hottest topic in ARM Linux community. It's expected to help clean up the mess existing in ARM architecture code, because it will completely remove the existing board file which is basically just a static list of platform devices for all non-discoverable devices. This paper gives an introduction on ARM Linux device tree support, and emphasizes how ARM Linux boots with the hardware configuration data that used to be passed by ATAGs retrieved from device tree instead. Free scale i.MX28 EVK board is taken as the example target to illustrate how to boot an ARM Linux kernel in practice. A boot time testing is set up on Free scale processors to show that the boot time latency introduced by device tee boot is very little.