Palawan's USB Stack is Now Known as Grainuum

The USB stack from project Palawan has grown beyond its original scope. The bootloader contains a completely separate copy, and it has been ported to at least one other platform. It is confusing to refer to both the hardware platform and the USB stack as “Palawan”. To help alleviate confusion and help the the projects stand on their own, the USB stack will be broken out into its own project and renamed Grainuum. Palawan will then use Grainuum for its USB stack. A third copy of Grainuum has been ported to the Chibitronics Love to Code platform where it is loaded via an audio transmission. Each of these use a completely separate copy of the USB stack, and by making Grainuum its own project, the disparate needs of these three projects can all be addressed at once, making for a more flexible core.

The name Palawan comes from a beach on Singapore’s Sentosa resort Island (which itself comes from an island in the Philippines.) Sentosa is full of attractions, and is a place to go to have fun. The name was chosen to reflect the fact that Palawan is supposed to be a project for having fun, both for users of the boards, and for myself designing it.

Being a beach, Palawan if made up of many grains of sand. This sand is portable, and indeed I end up inadvertently bringing a large amount home with me when I visit. Grainuum is a fundamental part of Palawan in much this same way.

Grainuum will be presented at 33c3 as part of a talk on how to write a bit-banged USB stack. Come visit, or tune in online on 28 December at 16:00 CET.