The Flattened Device Tree (FDT) is a data structure for
describing the hardware in a system. It is a derived from the
device tree format used by Open Firmware to encapsulate platform
information and convey it to the- operating system. The
operating system uses the FDT data to find and register the
devices in the system. Currently the Linux kernel can read
device tree information in the x86, PowerPC and Sparc
architectures. There is interest in extending support for device
trees to other platforms, to unify the handling of platform
description across kernel architectures. The Linux kernel
includes a "compiler" which takes a device tree description in
"dts" format and produces a binary, "dtb", format, suitable for
linking into the kernel. See scripts/dtc in the kernel source
directory. There is documentation describing device tree support
(with information current as of 2006) in the Linux kernel source
tree at: Documentation/powerpc/booting-without-of.txt The
Flattened Device Tree is... The Flattened Device Tre