A Lightweight Bootloader Based on MIPS Architecture for Mobile Devices: Research and Implementation

Abstract:

A bootloader's main function is to initialize the hardware, pass an abstraction of the initialized hardware, a hardware description, to and execute the kernel. While most bootloaders concentrate on ARM or PowerPC architecture, in this paper we propose a lightweight bootloader based on MIPS architecture. The lightweight bootloader is mainly for mobile devices. First, we introduce the architecture of the bootloader and some special requirements for mobile devices are considered. Then, based on the architecture, we implement the bootloader in MIPS assembly language and C language. To validate our research, we test the bootloader in a real MIPS-based evaluation board. The results show that our bootloader works quite well. With MIPS technology's role becoming more and more important in mobile Internet, we hope that the bootloader developed in this paper will be utilized in the future.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volumes 543-547)
• Pages: 2067-2070
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.543-547.2067
• Online since: March 2014
• Authors: Wei Dong*
• Keywords: Address Map, Lightweight Bootloader, MIPS Architecture, Mobile Device

References

[1] ARM processor website, http: /www. arm. com/products/processors/index. php.

[2] Power architecture technology, https: /www. power. org.

[3] MIPS embedded processor website, http: /www. imgtec. com/mips/mips-processor. asp.

[4] Pedersen, Per E. Adoption of mobile Internet services: An exploratory study of mobile commerce early adopters., Journal of organizational computing and electronic commerce 15. 3 (2005): 203-222.

DOI: 10.1207/s15327744joce1503_2

[5] Buchanan, George, et al. Improving mobile internet usability., Proceedings of the 10th international conference on World Wide Web. ACM, (2001).

[6] Cheong, Je Ho, and Myeong-Cheol Park. Mobile internet acceptance in Korea., Internet research 15. 2 (2005): 125-140.

DOI: 10.1108/10662240510590324

[7] Pedersen, Per E., and Rich Ling. Modifying adoption research for mobile Internet service adoption: Cross-disciplinary interactions., System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on. IEEE, (2003).

DOI: 10.1109/hicss.2003.1174217

[8] Branovic, Irina, Roberto Giorgi, and Enrico Martinelli. WebMIPS: a new web-based MIPS simulation environment for computer architecture education., Proceedings of the 2004 workshop on Computer architecture education: held in conjunction with the 31st International Symposium on Computer Architecture. ACM, (2004).

DOI: 10.1145/1275571.1275596

[9] Larus, James. Spim: A Mips32 Simulator., Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin–Madison. available at: http: /www. cs. wisc. edu/~ larus/spim. html [accessed: 11/25/2006] (2005).

[10] Sweetman, Dominic. See MIPS run. Morgan Kaufmann, (2010).

[11] Hennessy, John L., and David A. Patterson. Computer architecture: a quantitative approach. Elsevier, (2012).

[12] Tool Interface Standards Committee. Executable and Linkable Format (ELF)., Specification, Unix System Laboratories (2001).