MINIX 是一個微核心的作業系統,起初是為了教育目的而發展的. 當今最為人所知且流行於世的作業系統 Linux 就是來至於 MINIX 的啟發所發展而成的.
MINIX 最具價值的地方就在於內嵌式系統上的應用. MINIX 本質就是一個內嵌式系統. 時下 SOC 的發展正紅日當頭, MINIX 將來有一天也許有機會整合於 SOC 的開發,進而發展具有創意的應用.

SOC 本身是 System On Chip 的縮寫, 意味著僅僅只有硬體上的進步亦然不足以應付日新月異的創新需求, 故而搭配開發設計精巧簡單的軟體系統也同樣重要.

MINIX 本身擁有完善的設計架構並持續精進中, 且其應用範圍亦相當的廣泛, 可實現大部分想實現的高階應用. 唯目前 MIINIX 只支援 INTEL x86 系列的 CPU, 對於現今世界上同樣廣受親睞的 ARM 核心之 CPU 卻未給予同樣的支援. 所以本著興趣與可研究性, 開始著手研究移植 MINIX 到 ARM 上的實作. 慶幸地在移植過程中與初步移植後能夠得到不錯的成果, 討論與進一步的發展方向. 期待為嵌入式系統添一股小小助力, 能在未來看到 MINIX 日益強大的功能與應用.

MINIX is a tiny OS kernel originally for teaching purpose. The well known presently popular OS, Linux, is extended from right this OS kernel of MINIX. The most valuable one of MINIX feature is the application for embedded system. Nowadays the development of SOC is full of vitality and it might someday integrate the MINIX with creative application.

SOC is shorten from System On Chip. It implies that hardware cannot hold without a system so studying, developing and broadcasting the design of a fine and simple system is as important as designing a mature hardware.

MINIX has well designed architecture and can be elastically extended for any application if anything is wanted to carry out. But orginal MINIX is only designed for INTEL x86 CPU. It should be more extensively extended to more environments. ARM is nowadays popular CPU on the world and this gives our a worthy studying to port MINIX to ARM. Surely during and after porting we found a lot of circumstances that can help and give other evelopers useful information and methods to carry on farther studying and improvement.

Chapter 1 Introduction 1
1.1 What is Minix ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 2 Process manager 5
2.1 Process Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Memory Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 System Calls Involving PM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4 Internal Communications in MINIX 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
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Chapter 3 Porting PM 11
3.1 The ARM920T-S3C2410 Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2 The Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3 Porting PM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 12
3.3.1 Reading Program Headers in ELF Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3.2 Memory Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Chapter 4 The Fast Context Switch Extension 22
4.1 About The FCSE Feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.2 Integrating FCSE Feature into MINIX ARM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2.1 Initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.2.2 Modifying and Patching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4.2.3 Kernel with FCSE . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2.4 Memory and Cache Data Coherency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.2.5 Read-allocate and write-allocate on cache miss . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.2.6 Resolving Data Coherency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.2.7 Page Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.2.8 Domain Preemption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.2.9 Remapping Memory and I/O Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
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4.3 Performance Improvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Chapter 5 Conclusion and Future Works 55
5.1 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . 55
5.2 Future Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

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