While I have experience in embedded 'bare metal' MCU applications primarily at the 'control/response' level, as well as higher level functions implemented with an OS (i.e. Linux) wrapper
While Linux has become very popular in this space, certainly for one because it both eases and speeds development a great deal, I still have a number of unanswered questions:
1) For one, obviously running a full distribution consumes some level of overhead aside from the user defined code itself. Does anyone have any statistics as to, roughly, utilizing the standard Sitara supported distributions, what percentage of decline in performance accounts for?
2) Utilizing a Linux distro as a base, is one's code 'protected' ? Obviously compiled code would need to be compiled, but are there any means that keep someone from simply 'slipping in' and doing a 'cp' (configure login and root at the factory before the product is shipped ?)
3) In the case that 1) tends to be rather minimal and 2) has an established method from switching from development to production, I think it could be the preferred method. But for a moment lets say neither suffice for particular requirements and 'bare metal' is best for the needs of a client. If I am looking to transfer over/translate an ANSI C program first developed on the desktop, and assuming I don't have a NAND or SD card (i.e. 'traditional' file source) but rather anticipate taking in data over Ethernet and shuffling it directly to SDRAM (which I do have) what sort of examples would I be looking at to adjust my code that traditionally sources its input data from 'files'? I looked over the Starterware examples, but didn't seem to find an example that exactly suited, so I wasn't sure if anyone had any suggestions in this regard.
Further, since Linux, in its various flavors, as an embedded distro is becoming ever increasingly popular in this space, at the same time perhaps someone can point out something in 1) or 2) that I am not seeing/missing.