Professional Windows® Embedded Compact 7

BSP OVERVIEW

A Windows Embedded Compact 7 target system requires a Board Support Package (BSP) to develop and run the operating system. For a shipped system, it enables the system to boot and run in terms of the specific hardware that the target has. For development it supports additional features such as the download and debugging of an operating system image. Although the Platform Builder installed base of Compact 7 supports a range of CPUs and devices, a BSP can support target board-specific components and configurations.

A Compact 7 target system will have as its core a CPU that is either a MIPS (MIPS II and MIPS II Floating Point), an ARM (v5, v6, v6 MP, or v7), or an x86 (32 bit and 64 bit). Compact 7 is the first OS in the Embedded Compact/CE series to also support multicore CPUs, and if this to be used, then the BSP has to implement it. A CPU requires a chipset to handle interrupts and other things such as Input/Output (IO). Compact 7 also has a requirement that the target system have a Memory Management Unit (MMU). This enables the operating system to map memory mapped components (such as RAM and non-serial ROM) into its virtual address space (which is what it uses once booted) in a disjointed manner with respect to their actual physical memory address space. Although Windows Embedded CE 6 supported 4G virtual address, it supported only 512M of actual RAM. Compact 7 supports up to slightly less than 4G of RAM. A Compact 7 may have a display component or it can exist without ...