AMD Linux is the most prevalent operating system used by AMD products. AMD provides the PetaLinux tools for a simplified Linux development flow, as well as source code and Yocto recipe files from our GIT repository such that Linux support for AMD silicon can be supported by in-house build systems or 3rd party tools.  The AMD Linux project is a customized non-commercial Linux development project catered towards development on Versal™ ACAP,  Zynq™ SoC and MicroBlaze™.

The Linux kernel support for the AMD releases are:

• 2017.x is 4.9  
• 2018.x is 4.14  
• 2019.x is 4.19 

The new Vitis™ unified software platform, AMD Software Development Kit (SDK), and Ecosystem Partner tools offer a wide choice of development environments that enable SoC-like C/C++ programming of the Zynq and MPSoC platforms.

AMD offers two tools to build and deploy Emebdded Linux solutions. These are PetaLinux BY AMD and the Open Source Project of Yocto. PetaLinux offers the user a GUI to quickly build the Embedded Linux and Yocto can be used by more experienced users to custom based Linux for their boards.

AMD products are supported by comprehensive set of open source resources to develop, boot, run, debug and maintain your Linux based application for a AMD SoC or emulation platform. We offer example applications, Kernel configurations, Yocto recipes, Multiprocessing and Real-time solutions, device drivers and Linux open source developer will find familiar sources, tools, and support forums to learn, develop and interact with others of like interests, needs and passion.

"A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) intended to serve real-time application process data as it comes in, typically without buffering delays. (wikipedia.org)”

Key factors in an RTOS are keeping it simple and light weight. Other factors are minimal interrupt latency and contact thread switching latency. An RTOS is valued more for how quickly and how deterministically it can respond than for the amount of complexity it can handle.

Please refer https://www.freertos.org/RTOS.html for further information.

More information about FreeRTOS on AMD Products can be found at AMD FreeRTOS.

More Information on bare metal drivers and libraries can be found at the AMD Wiki at: Bare Metal and Libraries.

AMD provides its customers and partners with key technologies, documentation and support to enable advanced, multi-OS system designs on our products. Offerings available from our ecosystem include:

AMD also supports the Open Source Project Open Asymmetric Multi Processing (OpenAMP). OpenAMP) is a framework providing the software components needed to enable the development of software applications for Asymmetric Multiprocessing (AMP) systems. Please see the Open Source (put link to the other tab) for more details.

AMD offers designers a full suite of training and support options for their Zynq™ and MPSoC applications to include design methodologies, video tutorials, developer's forums, Wiki, on-line-support, design services, FAQs and Blogs to insure that your application gets to market on time.

MicroBlaze™ is the AMD FPGA-based, 32-bit/64-bit RISC Harvard architecture soft processor. It supports advanced architecture options such as AXI interface, Memory Management Unit (MMU), instruction and data-side cache, configurable pipeline depth and Floating-Point Unit (FPU).

• MicroBlaze
• MicroBlaze Wiki

The soft processor core is included with the AMD software tools and comes with the following three presets for the user:

The Cortex-M1 and Cortex-M3 processors are 32-bit processors designed for low power, low logic resources and low interrupt latency performance. The Cortex-M1 is designed very much for constrained applications, which require communication, control and management. While the M3 is intended for a wide range of embedded and IoT applications. To support forward compatibility the Cortex-M1 implements a subset of the Cortex-M3 instruction set and features.

• Cortex®‑M1 DesignStart™ FPGA-AMD edition package
• Bringing the benefits of Cortex-M processors to FPGA
• Adaptable Advantage Blog

AMD and its Ecosystem Partners deliver embedded tools and runtime environments designed to enable you to efficiently and quickly move from concept to release. We provide you with all the components needed to create your embedded system using AMD Zynq™ SoC and Zynq™ UltraScale+™ MPSoC devices, MicroBlaze™ processor cores,  and Arm® Cortex®-M1/M3 micro controllers including open source operating systems and bare metal drivers, multiple runtimes and Multi-OS environments, sophisticated Integrated Development Environments, and compilers, debuggers, and profiling tools.

AMD believes and participates in the Open Source community. The main focus and projects are below. There are also additional designs and information on the Hackster Community Portal.

AMD has been using Open Source Linux since it has introduced processors in their devices. The first was the Virtex-II Pro in 2001. Since that time AMD has utilized Open Source Linux and started to contribute with upstream patches since 2007. When Xilinx unveiled Zynq™ 7000 they started to really establish themselves in the Linux community. They now are one of the leading contributors to the Linux Uboot project.

Linaro is an open source project that developments software across the entire Arm Ecosystem. Linaro partners with ARM to co-maintain the Arm Ecosystem. 

As stated on the 96boards page “96Boards is a range of hardware specifications created by Linaro to make the latest ARM-based processors available to developers at a reasonable cost. The specifications are open and define a standard board layout for SoC-agnostic (processor independent) development platforms that can be used by software application, hardware device, kernel and other system software developers.”​

The 96Board with a AMD device is an Ultra96 that is sold by Avnet. There is development by Avnet, AMD and the Linaro community on the Ultra96. For more information visit http://zedboard.org/product/ultra96-v2-development-board

OpenAMP is a Linaro Community Project that seeks to standardize the interactions between operating environments in a heterogeneous embedded system through open source solutions. The OpenAMP Initative include the following items​

• OpenAMP is an open AMP framework that includes two efforts:​
  • A standardized way of using AMP ​
  • A clean-room open source implementation/project​
• OpenAMP currently includes the following components:​
  • Lifecycle operations - Such as start/stop another environment​
  • Messaging - Sending and receiving messages​
  • Low level abstractions – Sharing memory, inter-processor interrupts, …​
  • Proxy operations - Remote access to services, e.g. file system​
  • Under development: Resource configuration using System Device Trees​
• Built on top of existing open source projects/standards​
  • RemoteProc, rpmsg, Virtio, Device Trees​
• Accelerate adoption by working in open source​
  • Linux and RTOS implementations

As the Yocto Project states: “The Yocto Project is an open source collaboration project that helps developers create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products, regardless of the hardware architecture. The project provides a flexible set of tools and a space where embedded developers worldwide can share technologies, software stacks, configurations and best practices which can be used to create tailored Linux images for embedded devices.”