Meaning of BSP and LSP

Meaning of BSP and LSP

[Sam Song]

Hi all,

I'd like to make sure about the meaning of BSP and
LSP. There is sth unclear in my mind, I am afraid.

IMHO, BSP includes Board's Hardware Scheme and Boot
Loader Code in Binary format or Source code. LSP
should be composed of Development Kit like ELDK and
Linux Kernel Source for special Board. I am right?



=====
Best regards,

Sam

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Re: Meaning of BSP and LSP

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <20041013193959.57540.qmail@web15605.mail.cnb.yahoo.com> you wrote:
> 
> I'd like to make sure about the meaning of BSP and
> LSP. There is sth unclear in my mind, I am afraid.

Don't worry. These terms are not clearly defined at all.

> IMHO, BSP includes Board's Hardware Scheme and Boot
> Loader Code in Binary format or Source code. LSP
> should be composed of Development Kit like ELDK and
> Linux Kernel Source for special Board. I am right?

No. Both BSP and LSP are terms used by peple who try to turn software
into products that can be sold. They have vendor  specific  meanings.
Some vendors may bundle boot loader code with thei BSP, others don't.
Only  if  you  buy  the  BSP  from a hardware manufacturer there is a
chance that you will receive board schematics with it; etc. etc.  And
LSP  is  just  another  marketing term to hide that somebody tries to
sell free software the same way other RTOS vendors sell BSP's. If  it
includes tools or not depends again on the vendor.

My recommendation: don't care about these terms.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

-- 
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd@denx.de
The management question ... is not _whether_ to build a pilot  system
and  throw  it away. You _will_ do that. The only question is whether
to plan in advance to build a throwaway, or to promise to deliver the
throwaway to customers.       - Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"

Re: Meaning of BSP and LSP

[Sam Song]

Wolfgang Denk <wd@denx.de> wrote：
> Don't worry. These terms are not clearly defined at
> all.

It turned to be like this. No wonder I didn't make it
clear.:-)

> My recommendation: don't care about these terms.

OK, after taking your explanation, I wouldn't be
confused by a salesman at least.

Thanks very much. 

=====
Best regards,

Sam

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Re: Meaning of BSP and LSP

[Marius Groeger]

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004, Sam Song wrote:

> I'd like to make sure about the meaning of BSP and
> LSP. There is sth unclear in my mind, I am afraid.

>From what I know, the term BSP was coined as an acronym for "Board 
Support Package" in pre-Linux days. To me it is most familiar in 
conjunction with Embdedded (RT)OSes such as LynxOS, vxWorks, or pSOS 
and many others. These systems have a more or less clearly defined BSP 
API, meaning that a port to a new platform is a well defined process.

Grossly simplified, the BSP provider must implement a number of 
support functions which make hardware resources (interrupts, memory 
and so forth) available to the common kernel code. Note also that this 
is valid across architectures (PPC, ARM, X86...).

Linux still doesn't really offer something like this. Some people may 
argue that things are actually improving, but most people probably 
just don't care. The simplest reason I can think of for that is that 
there were always enough knowledgable people to do the hard porting 
work. Also, obviously, Linux doesn't care for commercial issues such 
like wanting to keep the common kernel code closed.

"LSP" is a term introduced by MontaVista, AFAIR, so maybe one of the 
MV folks on this list wants to elaborate on this?

Bottom line: BSP is an OS/Vendor specific term to capture the software 
components related to a specific board. It is a useful handle in 
project discussions, provided that all participants use the same 
notion.

Regards,
Marius

-- 
Marius Groeger <mgroeger@sysgo.com>
SYSGO AG                      Embedded and Real-Time Software
Voice: +49 6136 9948 0                  FAX: +49 6136 9948 10
www.sysgo.com | www.elinos.com | www.osek.de | www.imerva.com

Re: Meaning of BSP and LSP

[Sam Song]

Marius Groeger <mgroeger@sysgo.com> wrote：

> From what I know, the term BSP was coined as an
> acronym for "Board Support Package" in pre-Linux 
> days. To me it is most familiar in 

So that day the meaning of BSP was clear enough.

> "LSP" is a term introduced by MontaVista, AFAIR, so
> maybe one of the MV folks on this list wants to 
> elaborate on this?

I also got the term "LSP" from MV. 
 
> Bottom line: BSP is an OS/Vendor specific term to
> capture the software components related to a 
> specific board. It is a useful handle in 
> project discussions, provided that all participants
> use the same notion.

See what's EP view on "BSP". 
http://www.embeddedplanet.com/products/bsp_linux.asp

It seems that BSP > = LSP.

Just as Wolfgang said, the meaning  varys in different
vendors. But at least "LSP" by MV doesn't include
hardware scheme and boot loader code, I think.

"LSP" is a special term defined by MV. So just to
follow the meaning as MV does.

Thanks for your nice comment on this topic.

=====
Best regards,

Sam

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