Design Decisions#

The decision of what bootloader type to deploy depends on many factors. Note that the platform type and available flash memory may limit bootloader choices.

Some questions related to this are:

• Where does the device get the new update image? Is this over-the-air via the networking protocol? Using a separate interface connected to the Internet?

• Will the device have an external memory chip to store a new update image? If not, is there enough internal flash memory to store both a current and a newly downloaded copy of the largest expected application image?

• If the device receives the new image over-the-air, will it be multiple hops away from the server holding the download image?

• What kind of image security is needed?

• What communications driver will be used (in the single protocol case)?

• Does the use case require more than one protocol?

The configurable design of the Gecko Bootloader platform means that developers can create bootloaders to fit almost any design choice. See Silicon Labs Gecko Bootloader User's Guide for GSDK 4.0 and Higher (series 1 and 2 devices) or Silicon Labs Gecko Bootloader User’s Guide for Series 3 and Higher.