CODEWITHSUNDEEP
qtmemoryembedded-linux
tutuca
tutuca

Reputation: 3670

How much memory does linux kernel and base services use?

I'm doing and embedded linux+qt project and I was wondering what was the base memory consuption of the linux kernel plus some basic services. Just enough to run some framebuffer based application.

I ended up in here: http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/requirements-embedded-linux.html but as I'm reading that seems like it's just the qt requirements without counting the linux overhead.

Can someone point me to a more detailed resource on the topic?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 639

Answers (2)

László Papp
László Papp

Reputation: 53175

I would suggest using Yocto for such builds, but you can also take a look at the upcoming "Boot to Qt" project which is basic a Qt 5 replacement for Qt embedded with Qt 4. I would not suggest looking into the link you pasted in your question.

You should definitely focus on Qt 5 for several reasons. The foremost is probably because you can get hardware acceleration and Qt got a lot of utilization for embedded, including decoupling the QtWidgets module, and so forth.

Here you can find the technology preview that the guy in Norway are working on. This is just for future reference:

http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2013/05/21/introducing-boot-to-qt-a-technology-preview/

I would start using the Yocto project for now. We have worked on a "meta-qt5" layer which is not perfect, but good enough. Yocto will also take care of the Linux with "minimal images", et cetera.

Not sure if you had seen the classic example a couple of years ago, but there was a "Qt boot" for an embedded Linux board which happened within a second. Here is the link to the reading material. Unfortunately, the original video does not seem to be available anymore.

http://www.embedded-bits.co.uk/2011/1-second-linux-boot-to-qt/

Upvotes: 1

paulsm4
paulsm4

Reputation: 121799

The numbers in the table you cited look reasonable.

The actual answer is "it depends". Yes, Virginia: it is possible to have a working OS and a Qt-based GUI in under 4MB.

The actual memory usage will vary wildly, depending on:

  • Which kernel you use
  • How you configure your kernel build
  • Which kernel drivers you load at runtime
  • What you start up during system init
  • Etc etc

Book recommendation:

Embedded Linux Primer, Christopher Hallinan

ALSO: here's a list of prebuilt-distros with GUIs that all run on Pentium IVs with 512MB RAM:

http://www.osnews.com/story/26087

Upvotes: 1

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