Portability and evaluation of ITRON device driver design guideline

摘要

In recently embedded systems, because devices that are connected to a processor are increasingly varied and because of short development cycle, reusability of device driver is strongly required. In this background, "ITRON Device Driver Design Guideline Working Group" is investigating on a guideline which gives design rules of device drivers. This guideline adopts a layered structure to improve portability of device drivers. This layered structure separates dependencies on kernel, processor, interrupt request controller, connection method of devices to different layers, then improves the portability. In this paper, we give an outline of the ITRON Device Driver Design Guideline, and show how the portability is improved through an example solution of an endian problem which frequently occurs on development of device drivers. We also evaluate portability with a sample implementation.