The linux kernel is responsible for managing all the hardware. Which brings us to the question: how does it know what hardware there is to manage? On traditional PC platforms, the kernel can read out a lot of information from the BIOS. But on embedded devices such as the BeagleBone (Black), there is no BIOS to read from.
The answer is that you simply tell the kernel what hardware is present. The way you do that, is by providing a device tree during boot. This tree lists all the hardware that is present on the system, along with the needed parameters.
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