Patent ID: 7844945

Claim:
A method for producing a fixed-size generic firmware image for a hardware device, parameterized for a plurality of component environments, the method comprising: providing a logical description of aspects of said plurality of component environments; providing a physical description of physical aspects of said plurality of component environments; associating said logical description with said physical description; providing said firmware image to include a plurality of generic parameterized functions to support aspects of said hardware device in each of said plurality of component environments, each of said plurality of generic parameterized functions supporting at least one of said aspects of said hardware device in each of said plurality of component environments, wherein an actual argument to at least one of said generic parameterized functions is a fixed-sized non-typed block of bits whose interpretation is context sensitive, wherein the interpretation of the fixed-size non-typed block of bits by a particular generic parameterized function depends on the logical and physical aspects of the particular component environment, and wherein actual arguments to said parameterized functions are bound at run time.