A.2 Hardware Summary

This section contains detailed information regarding your hardware from the software perspective. The information required for this section is most likely found in your embedded system's specifications, which are available either from your hardware department or from your board and processor vendors. This hardware information is crucial for many aspects of building the embedded Linux system. Table A-2 describes each field in the "Hardware summary" section. As I said earlier, feel free to extend the number of entries related to "Peripherals" so there's one for each of your system's peripherals.

Table A-2. Description of "Hardware summary" fields
Field	Description
Processor family	One of the processor families discussed in Chapter 3.
Processor model	The processor model within a processor family. If the processor is part of the PowerPC family, for example, its model could be 450, 750, 860, etc.
Board type	Manufacturers usually have board families or types that have similar characteristics. You can leave this field empty if there is no such characteristic for your board.
Board model	The model or part number for your board.
RAM size	The size of system RAM.
RAM start and end addr	The location of the RAM in the physical address space.
ROM/Flash size	The size of system ROM or flash.
ROM/Flash start and end addr	The location of the ROM/Flash in the physical address space.
ROM/Flash model	The ROM or flash chip model.
Processor startup address	The address from which the processor fetches its first instruction.
Disk storage type	Fill this field if you are using an IDE or SCSI device or a device that acts as one, such as a CompactFlash device.
Disk storage size	The storage space available on the disk device.
Peripherals: Type	The kind of peripheral device: Ethernet controller, video controller, CAN interface, etc.
Peripherals: Model	The model or part number for the peripheral chip.
Peripherals: Description	A description of the peripheral's characteristics.
Peripherals: Mem location	The physical address space window used to access the peripheral.
Peripherals: ID	Some peripherals have unique IDs. If the peripheral is an Ethernet device, for example, write the device's MAC address, if there's only one such device being produced, or the MAC address range used for the production run, if there are many units produced.