Re: Radxa Zero and FreeBSD : happy marriage ?

Ok. So the radxa is a soc that can't be used. At the moment I'm not sure
what soc is good for this project. The only soc that seems to be usable is
the raspberry pi zero 2W. But it has only 500MB of memory so it can run X
and only a few apps. Not a good SOC for creating a mobile phone. For sure
there are a lot of socs in the market,but they aren't slim. You know,a
mobile phone should have a maximum of 1.5 cm of thickness or it does not
resemble a mobile device and it is not appetible for the eyes.

I'm working on this project with another person. We have to choose
carefully the hardware components because FreeBSD has some limitations.
There aren't drivers for the display (they are developed for Linux,mostly)
and the problem of the - power consumption. FBSD's kernel itself consumes
more than Linux kernel even after tuning. It is because the FBSD team did
not ever consider running embedded battery powered devices. They cared
about not overheating the CPU, but not to save power. One of the keys
(besides the kernel codebase) - is knowing from documentation how to manage
internal SoC's clocks and peripherals (turn them on and off, tuning clocks
frequency, etc.). So, that is why we insisted that the SoC has to be
properly documented to withstand the goals of the project. Otherwise, we
will run out of even powerful batteries within a couple hours. The most
hungry consumer is the screen. So it is mandatory to have an ability to
turn it off completely, but still run the kernel in power-save mode.

So,we think that we can use,at least to start, the raspberry pi zero 2W
that has the advantage of being very widely known and supported by the
community. It can run kernel + X + some apps. We target 512Mb boards as
well at the time until it is not tough to fit everything we need.

Due to the lack of drivers for the display,we are forced to use USB/HDMI
screens that are driver-less. We know that we can buy them from Elecrow,for
example. This could be the only solution. The model that we are looking for
should not use a driver board and no drivers. Maybe one HDMI display is
overkill for our phone. But for sure it should be powered by attaching it
to the USB port of the SOC. Size should be between 4 and 5 inches.

On Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 4:12 PM Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:

> I was gifted a Radxa many years ago...  And it looked like a lot of work
> to bring things up on it, not least because the boot loader was weird to
> even get started with uboot, and the uboot you needed was a fork of an
> ancient branch of upstream uboot. Tha AmLogic datasheets at the time were
> unobtanium, but have since become findable (I'm told by someone I chatted
> about the Radxa at I think BSDcan over beers before covid). I gave up due
> to the large amount of work it would have been to translate everything from
> just the Linux sources.
>
> Warner
>
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 8:03 AM Ganbold Tsagaankhuu <ganbold@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Amlogic is not supported in FreeBSD at all and nobody is working on this
>> SoC, so if I were you I wouldn't buy it.
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 25, 2024, 10:49 PM Mario Marietto <marietto2008@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks. I see more development with this model :
>>>
>>> http://radxa.com/products/zeros/zero3e/#techspec
>>>
>>> according to this thread :
>>>
>>> https://forum.radxa.com/t/zero-3e-freebsd/20661
>>>
>>> Unfortunately this soc is not slender as the previous one. And anyway,a
>>> lot of functions don't work on FreeBSD.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 25, 2024 at 3:32 PM Mark Millard <marklmi@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Nov 25, 2024, at 03:02, Mario Marietto <marietto2008@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > I'm planning to buy this soc :
>>>> > Radxa Zero
>>>> >     • Specifications:
>>>> >         • CPU: Amlogic S905Y2 quad-core Cortex-A53
>>>> >         • RAM: Up to 4GB LPDDR4 (4GB option available)
>>>> >         • Ports:
>>>> >             • Mini HDMI
>>>> >             • Micro USB OTG
>>>> >             • Micro USB power
>>>> >         • Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0
>>>> >
>>>> > because I'm trying to assemble a mobile phone powered by FreeBSD.
>>>> This soc seems to be the only option available given its performances and
>>>> slenderness.
>>>> > But what I want to know is how compatible it is with FreeBSD. Are
>>>> there some huge unfixed bugs ? Problems with HDMI or whatever ? thanks.
>>>>
>>>> It does not appear to have a FreeBSD U-Boot port, making it
>>>> seem unlikely that the kernel work has been done to support
>>>> the soc.
>>>>
>>>> For reference:
>>>>
>>>> # ls -dC1 /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-*/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-a13-olinuxino/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-a64-olinuxino/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-bananapi/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-bananapim2/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-beaglebone/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-bhyve-arm64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-bhyve-riscv/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-chip/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-clearfog/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-cubieboard/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-cubieboard2/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-cubox-hummingboard/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-firefly-rk3399/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-imx-serial-loader/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-master/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-a64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-m1plus/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-neo-air/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-neo/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-neo2/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-r2s/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-r4s/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-nanopi-r5s/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-olimex-a20-som-evb/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-olinuxino-lime/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-olinuxino-lime2-emmc/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-olinuxino-lime2/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-orangepi-one/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-orangepi-pc-plus/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-orangepi-pc/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-orangepi-pc2/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-orangepi-plus-2e/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-orangepi-r1/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-orangepi-zero-plus/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-orangepi-zero/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-pandaboard/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-pcduino3/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-pine-h64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-pine64-lts/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-pine64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-pinebook/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-pinebookpro/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-qemu-arm/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-qemu-arm64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-qemu-riscv64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-quartz64-a/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-quartz64-b/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-riotboard/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rock-pi-4/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rock64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rockpro64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rpi-0-w/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rpi-arm64/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rpi/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rpi2/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rpi3-32/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rpi3/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-rpi4/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-sifive-fu540/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-sifive-fu740/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-sinovoip-bpi-m3/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-sopine-spi/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-sopine/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-starfive-visionfive2/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-tools/
>>>> /usr/ports/sysutils/u-boot-wandboard/
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ===
>>>> Mark Millard
>>>> marklmi at yahoo.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Mario.
>>>
>>

-- 
Mario.