Network Board Support Package

This chapter describes all board-specific functions that you may need to implement.

In order for a device driver to be platform independent, it is necessary to provide a layer of code that abstracts details such as configuring clocks, interrupt controllers, general-purpose input/ouput (GPIO) pins, direct-memory access (DMA) modules, and other such hardware modules. The board support package (BSP) code layer enables you to implement certain high-level functionality in µC/TCP-IP that is independent of any specific hardware. It also allows you to reuse device drivers from various architectures and bus configurations without having to customize µC/TCP-IP or the device driver source code for each architecture or hardware platform.

To understand the concepts discussed in this guide, you should be familiar with networking principles, the TCP/IP stack, real-time operating systems, microcontrollers and processors.

Micrium provides sample BSP code free of charge; however, most sample code will likely require modification depending on the combination of compiler, processor, board, and device hardware used.