Fujifilm's Tech History
History
- In 1988, Fujifilm released their first 0.4mp digital camera, the Fujix DS-1P (first commercial digital camera)
- Fuji released the $3500 Fujifilm S1 Pro in 2000, which accepted firmware updates
- In 2003, Fujifilm first released a firmware update and hackers on DPReview started to tinker with it
- Fujifilm started out using VxWorks, then later switched to MiSPO iTRON/NORTi
- More modern cameras use ThreadX, an open source RTOS. Many pieces of the original 2003 Fujifilm code is still present.
- SQLite was introduced in ~2012 to manage special settings in the camera. SQLite starts up about 10 minutes after powering on.
- In 2016-2017, a web server and networking drivers were introduced into the firmware, for WiFi connectivity (wpa_supplicant)
- In 2022, Linux is booted on the X-H2S for WiFi and processing functionality.
- To this day, Fujifilm continues to use most of the original firmware code from the early 2000s.
CPUs
- Early Fujifilm cameras started out with 64 bit TX49 MIPS III CPUs but switched to 32 bit ARM later on
- Smaller cameras have the FF4224 SoC, but there is also a FF4226. These appear to be ARM v6 CPUs.
- Recently, Fujifilm started compiling their firmware in thumb bytecode.
- The SoC has no internal memory and must be paired with external RAM chips (1gb is common)
- Flash chips tend to be under the SD card reader (and tend to be 64mb)