An Embedded System Boot Platform
The term boot monitor refers to the code that is run on a computer system as the lowest level of firmware resident to the hardware platform. You can find various types of boot monitors on a wide range of computer systems, certainly not limited to embedded systems. In general, a typical boot monitor provides the system with some very basic startup capabilities, and provides a bit of insurance to the user because if all else fails (meaning the upper layers of the installed OS), the boot monitor will still be there to fall back on. Typically, a boot monitor is built to provide a basic set of capabilities for diagnostic and system startup, and once the system has started up, the boot monitor is no longer in the picture. This is where I would like to introduce the term embedded system boot platform as a superset of a typical boot monitor.

An embedded system boot platform, like a boot monitor, is a target-resident environment that provides a suite of capabilities that enhances the development process. In its simplest form, the platform speeds up some of the early stages of embedded systems development. In more elaborate configurations, the platform can provide a simple flash file system, Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP)/Xmodem interfaces for application transfer, and a variety of additional commands and capabilities that provide enhancements to the development environment. As a part of a development strategy for an organization, an embedded system boot platform provides a common base on which to build a project. It is an integral part of the application itself, providing the system with a core set of features that are generic in nature and should be usable by application code regardless of the operating system. With that definition in mind, MicroMonitor is an embedded system boot platform.