Critical Link is an electronics product development company that provides “MityDSP” and “MityARM” System on Modules and Timesys is a software company working on Embedded Linux, which provides LinuxLink, a software development framework for embedded Linux application development. Both companies have partnered to offers LinuxLink BSP/SDK for MityARM-3359 SoM based on Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x Cortex A9 processor.
LinuxLink (for MityARM-335x) comes in 2 versions:
A free version which includes:
- A wizard-based interface that simplifies the selection of a Linux kernel, software packages and tools
- Kernel, toolchain and debugger
- Access to hundreds of open-source software packages
- Support by Timesys for build/boot issues.
- A PRO version (Starts at $5495 per developer) which includes extra “features” such as:
- TimeStorm IDE – A desktop-based development environment
- Tools for advanced customization and integration
- unmetered support
Everything is built on Timesys servers, but the web interface makes it quite customizable and offers lots of options such as uClibc / Glibc selection, which open source packages you want to include and how the rootfs is packaged (jffs2, cramfs, initramfs, tarball…) among other things. The short video below gives an 3 minutes overview of this web-based BSP/SDK build system:
If you want to give it a try, you’ll need to register, then download an existing Linux BSP/SDK or build a custom version using Timesys LinuxLink free edition. There are 2 pre-build images:
- Critical Link MityARM 335x Demo, an image that features TI Matrix-GUI-v2 application.
- Critical Link MityARM-335x Small Footprint, a mininal busybox image
MityARM-335x is not the only option however, as Timesys LinuxLink is said to support over 100 embedded platforms.
Further details are available on Timesys LinuxLink and Critical Link MityARM-3359 SoM page. Timesys YouTubechannel may also be interesting, as they provide more tutorial and demo videos for their tools.