Capabilities - Firmware, kernel, board bring-up
Embedded systems and device drivers
The layer where hardware stops being theoretical.
What that means in practice
- Board bring-up, boot chain and hardware abstraction
- Device driver development and debugging, kernel and user space
- Real-time constraints, interrupt behavior and determinism
- Bus and peripheral integration across common embedded interfaces
- Firmware update, rollback and secure boot design
- Power management and thermal behavior in constrained enclosures
- Depth
- Driver and systems work on production hardware, including platforms where the operating system had to be made aware of custom silicon.
- Who I bring in
- Kernel specialists, RTOS vendors, hardware validation engineers.
- Scoping this
- Bring the board and the symptom. Driver problems are usually cheaper to scope than they look.
Where I write about this
The newsletter follows what is changing here: one drawing, one decision worth revisiting, one tool used in anger, and what I am seeing across the network. Research worth reading gets cited when it changes a decision.
Adjacent
Rarely just one domain.
Most engagements touch three or four. These are the ones that usually come with it.
- R&D and special projects Feasibility, prototypes, hard problems
- RF, electromagnetics and analog Circuits, antennas, spectrum
- Semiconductor and programmable logic VLSI, ASIC, FPGA
- Hardware manufacturing and supply ODM, DFM, certification
- Industrial automation and controls Robotics, SCADA, OT
- Software engineering Systems, automation, quality
- Cloud and infrastructure architecture Hybrid, containers, automation
- Security engineering Architecture, identity, testing
- Governance, risk and compliance Audit, frameworks, fractional CISO
- Water, power and energy systems Treatment, generation, infrastructure
- Technical leadership and advisory Robotics, capital projects, family offices