Title: SoCks - Simplifying Firmware and Software Integration for Heterogeneous SoCs Show Chinese title

Title: SoCks - 为异构 SoC 简化固件和软件集成

Abstract: Modern heterogeneous System-on-Chip (SoC) devices integrate advanced components into a single package, offering powerful capabilities while also introducing significant complexity. To manage these sophisticated devices, firmware and software developers need powerful development tools. However, as these tools become increasingly complex, they often lack adequate support, resulting in a steep learning curve and challenging troubleshooting. To address this, this work introduces System-on-Chip blocks (SoCks), a flexible and expandable build framework that reduces complexity by partitioning the SoC image into high-level units called blocks. SoCks builds each firmware and software block in an encapsulated way, independently from other components of the image, thereby reducing dependencies to a minimum. While some information exchange between the blocks is unavoidable to ensure seamless runtime integration, this interaction is standardized via interfaces. A small number of dependencies and well-defined interfaces simplify the reuse of existing block implementations and facilitate seamless substitution between versions-for instance, when choosing root file systems for the embedded Linux operating system. Additionally, this approach facilitates the establishment of a decentralized and partially automated development flow through Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). Measurement results demonstrate that SoCks can build a complete SoC image up to three times faster than established tools. Show Chinese abstract

Abstract: 现代异构系统级芯片（SoC）设备将先进组件集成到一个封装中，提供强大的功能，同时也引入了显著的复杂性。 为了管理这些复杂的设备，固件和软件开发人员需要强大的开发工具。 然而，随着这些工具变得越来越复杂，它们往往缺乏足够的支持，导致学习曲线陡峭且难以排查问题。 为了解决这个问题，本工作引入了系统级芯片块（SoCks），这是一个灵活且可扩展的构建框架，通过将SoC镜像划分为称为块的高层单元来降低复杂性。 SoCks以封装的方式构建每个固件和软件块，独立于镜像的其他组件，从而将依赖性降至最低。 尽管在块之间不可避免地需要一些信息交换以确保运行时的无缝集成，但这种交互通过接口进行标准化。 少量的依赖关系和明确定义的接口简化了现有块实现的重用，并促进了版本之间的无缝替换——例如，在为嵌入式Linux操作系统选择根文件系统时。 此外，这种方法通过持续集成和持续交付（CI/CD）促进了去中心化和部分自动化的开发流程。 测量结果表明，SoCks构建完整SoC镜像的速度比现有工具快多达三倍。