[GSoC 2014] Interested in ARM bringup tasks

Mon Mar 17 02:36:35 UTC 2014

Hi

I would love to see a porting effort to the new Tegra K1 board. Release is
set to Q2 this year but I don't know if it will be in time for GSoC...
With the powerful GPU on the K1 I see lots of uses in image processing
device in cars, surveillance etc, gaming consoles, tablet, smartphones etc.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-k1-processor.html

Thanks!

--
Johannes Lundberg
BRILLIANTSERVICE CO., LTD.

On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Ganbold Tsagaankhuu <ganbold at gmail.com>wrote:

> Alexander,
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 9:13 AM, Alexander Tarasikov <
> alexander.tarasikov at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 4:39 AM, Ganbold Tsagaankhuu <ganbold at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > Alexander,
> > >
> > >
> > > On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 7:19 AM, Alexander Tarasikov
> > > <alexander.tarasikov at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Hello, FreeBSD community!
> > >>
> > >> I am interested in participating in GSoC this year and I'd like to
> > >> pick up one of the tasks related to porting FreeBSD to new
> > >> architectures. I'm now doing my master's degree in software
> > >> engineering at the "Higher School of Economics" in Moscow.
> > >>
> > >> Since I love ARM and smartphones, I've chosen the project to port
> > >> FreeBSD to a smartphone. If that task is already occupied (which
> > >> doesn't seem so), I would be happy to pick up another task suggested
> > >> by the community.
> > >>
> > >> I want to port FreeBSD to the Sony Xperia Z phone. This phone has the
> > >> Qualcomm APQ8064 SoC which is used in a large number of smartphones,
> > >> including Google Nexus 4. Besides, Qualcomm SoCs are developed
> > >> incrementally so there's a high chance that the code for current
> > >> generation of chips will benefit future revisions as well.
> > >
> > >
> > > Interesting. I'm not quite sure how accessible is some pins like uart
> in
> > > Experia Z.
> > > I have it here, but I still didn't try to open it yet to see the pins
> > etc.
> > > Probably you meant here some embedded boards like ifc6410.
> > > Plus ifc6410 has docs so that could be useful too.
> > >
> >
> > Yes, that's the trouble with mobile phones - getting UART is hard. On
> > the other hand,
> > having pre-initialized framebuffer also helps in most cases. The problem
> > with
> > ifc6410 board is that I don't have one and even if someone wants to send
> > me one, I may have huge trouble with customs.
> >
> > I personally have the Xperia Z phone, and I don't really want to *buy*
> > another one
> > (because it looks like I have far more hardware than I have time to
> > play with it)
> > I may be able get my hands on an OMAP4-based Galaxy Nexus. Maybe someone
> > from Moscow could lend me some hardware. If I get stuck with Xperia, I
> may
> > exchange it for a Nexus 5 on a local craiglist since it's also qcom
> > but has UART.
> >
> > >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> It is known that debugging like JTAG and flash recovery is not
> > >> available on consumer devices because of DRM and general love for
> > >> obfuscation among the vendors. Therefore, to prevent bricking the
> > >> device,
> > >
> > >
> > > That is the hell, it seems Qualcomm uses lauterbach jtag adapter in
> that
> > > case.
> > > I and my friend and also some people have tried some adapters like
> > > flyswatter2 with ifc6410, still no luck.
> > >
> > >> I suggest using the chainloading approach, that is using the
> > >> bootloader that ships with the device and pretend to be a linux image.
> > >
> > >
> > > That can be done. Their bootloader like maybe LK in case of ifc6410 can
> > boot
> > > freebsd kernel.
> > > Actually I did that for ifc6410.
> >
> > I have not investigated how FreeBSD boots yet, but iirc LK only supports
> > linux
> > (at least it did 3 years ago when I ported it to msm7200A). Since you
> > have a working
> > kernel for ifc6410, I could try using it first. If it at least boots,
> > we can ignore the
> > UART and go straight into writing mmc block drivers.
> >
> >
> Even if you write mmc driver you still need full functioning uart driver
> (kernel+userland), that makes debugging easier at least and yet it allows
> to see all the boot messages and you know for sure you get login prompt :)
>
> Ganbold
>
>
> > >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> For the mid-term I want to port the u-boot bootloader and add the
> > >> support for accessing the microSD card from it. The u-boot will be
> > >> flashed to the device instead of the linux kernel.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > That could be cool.
> > >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Since the proprietary bootloader already initializes the display (we
> > >> can also port linux driver to u-boot), it should be possible, at least
> > >> during the initial stage, to use a simple driver in FreeBSD that would
> > >> write to the framebuffer allocated by the bootloader or only write the
> > >> framebuffer address to the display controller.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > That is nice. However first we need uart driver, then either usb ehci,
> > mmc
> > > or sata driver needs to mount rootfs in order to boot freebsd to
> > multiuser
> > > mode. I already have timer driver and minimal console driver so it
> makes
> > > booting little bit easier.
> >
> > Well, since GSoC wiki clearly states the task to port to a phone, the
> > only acceptable
> > route is mmc (usb is complex and anyway it is unacceptable to have a
> phone
> > tethered to the laptop all the time). I think a phone is a good target
> from
> > the marketing point of view, though it is not much different from a
> > development board.
> >
> > >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> In the past I've successfully ported linux to an Intel XScale-based
> > >> Asus P525 smartphone, ported Android with all hardware working to boot
> > >> from NAND on the Sony Xperia X1 phone and have ported various boards
> > >> from OEM to vanilla kernel trees. Recently I've experimented with the
> > >> XNU kernel (the one which is used in the fruity operating system) and
> > >> ported it to the OMAP5 board. So I think I'll be able to pull it off.
> > >
> > >
> > > Cool. In case of android or linux there are many people working on
> > various
> > > stuffs so in most case drivers are either written or somebody has got
> > > started working on particular driver already. For FreeBSD case it is
> > > different. You maybe know that very few people are working in case of
> ARM
> > > platform bringup, so we need more developers and I'm happy that you
> > decided
> > > to work on this direction.
> >
> > So I'm waiting for an opinion from the community. What is more desired -
> a
> > phone
> > port or a new SoC/board support? I have OMAP5432 development board, but
> > as you may know there are no phones with that CPU and there will never
> > be. On the
> > other hand, this board is
> > 1) Similiar to OMAP4
> > 2) Has SATA and USB 3.0
> > So if this hardware is supported it can potentially be interesting to
> > evaluate the performance
> > of a server-like installation on ARM A15 SoC.
> >
> > >
> > > Ganbold
> > >
> > >
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Have a nice day!
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >> Regards, Alexander
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org mailing list
> > >> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers
> > >> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
> > freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Regards, Alexander
> >
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-arm at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arm
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-arm-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>

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