Sorry for the cross posting, but I thought it worth the extra noise ;-)
One of the things that came out of the recent Geeko Love-In for me was a
new project to immerse myself in within openSUSE. Yeah I know, we have
enough existing projects already so why create a new one? Simples!
Believe it or not but openSUSE is behind the curve in a specific
segment, and that segment has yet to explode to its full potential. That
segment is ARM. No I'm not talking about your upper body appendages, but
the architecture that powers most of your little devices (and some
bigger ones too). Almost all smartphones, tablets and many other
consumer devices are powered by ARM from one of the numerous licensees.
Didn't openSUSE do something about this a while ago? Yes we did.
Unfortunately the effort seems to have bitrotted somewhat, there were
numerous reasons and I don't even prophesise to know the all either.
As such I'm going to try and kickstart things, and see it through and
hopefully see it grow. As I mentioned, this idea came up at the
conference when I was talking to numerous people (I forget how it all
started, but that doesn't really matter). There was an overwhelmingly
positive view on the matter, and that for me was all that counts. Now
let me be crystal clear here, *THIS WILL NOT BE A ONE MAN SHOW!!* I
mentioned previously that my view is that we as a community are pretty
lazy at times with getting our hands dirty. As such if you think things
are going slow or not going in the direction you would like, don't moan.
Get your hands dirty and help make a difference.
The process will not be an easy one either, so don't expect a port to
magically appear over night. If we're lucky we might be able to have a
working port in 6 months. Maybe longer, maybe shorter; ultimately that
lies with us as a community.
Stage one has begun already thanks to Adrian Schroeter, Alex Graf and
Dirk Mueller. Stage one comprises of getting the boot strap process to
work. At a cursory level this means getting the packages required for
setting up a build chroot environment and for building these packages on
the target ARM architecture. This will possibly take a fair amount of
time, and no I won't give any timelines for this - how long is a piece
of string?
openSUSE has a couple of advantages here, 1) we have the OBS which can
cross build and if need be cross compile packages for numerous
architectures (ARM included) so we are going to make a start with that;
2) SUSE are going to be doing another HackWeek (I think it is next week)
which means Adrian, Alex, Dirk and anyone else that has knowledge,
experience or interest can join in the fun and pain almost full time for
a week - let's not kid ourselves here there is a high probability for
lots of pain, but also fun ;-) Thing is HackWeek is not just for SUSE
staff, it is also for the community. You can join in and spend some
quality time on the project with those that know a whole heap of stuff,
and learn from them and maybe even teach them something too.
We are going to be targeting ARMv7 nothing older I'm afraid this means
CORTEX-A8 and above (looking at A9 primarily and then the new A15 when
it's available), it gets too messy otherwise and it is already messy
enough.If you have knowledge and experience, please help out. If you
don't take part you have no justification to complain - you've got to be
in it to win it ;-)
So I'm basically just giving you all a heads up on this effort, and will
update you as regularly as possible (I'm hoping to do something weekly
maybe). In the meantime, if you're interested join #opensuse-arm on
Freenode and the opensuse-arm mailing list. *DO NOT HARRASS* for
updates, if there is something to say it will be said. If you've got a
question, ask and *WAIT* for an answer. If you want to help out but want
to know how ask and *WAIT* for an answer. I will try and get something
on the wiki soon, with a todo list etc.
Thanks and here's to getting our Geeko some ARMs.
Regards,
Andy
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This is a hot topic, and one that seems to generate the most noise.
I've had a discussion with several people about target hardware, and
I've also looked at what our peers are doing and saying. At the same
time I've been trying to see what options we have for getting some
sponsorship for hardware.
There were three devices in the running, all are classed as development
boards - so no case or external prettyness (beauty comes from within
anyway):
TI PandaBoard [0]
Samsung Origen [1]
ST Ericsson Snowball [2]
After discussing, the preferred nominee is the PandaBoard. Several
factors led to this decision, it has an integrated wired network
connection; is well supported by the incumbant distros; widely used
within the wider ARM open source community; and it has Pandas (OK only
in name but still!)
So if you want to prep and get some hardware, then go for the PandaBoard
(as soon as the Cortex A15 is released, we'll be looking at them).
Yes, I know it's a developer board and not an end user product.
Unfortunately there aren't actually that many end user products that you
can sensibly use for development at the moment. Sure, there's the
TrimSlice[3] the DreamPlug[4] and a few others, but after consulting
someone that is far more knowledgable and aware of the wider landscape
we went with their recommendations.
Oh and things are moving pretty fast folk!! \o/
0 = http://www.pandaboard.org/
1 = http://www.origenboard.org/
2 = http://www.igloocommunity.org/
3 = http://trimslice.com/
4 = http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx
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Here is Marvell's description of the processor:
The Marvell ARMADA 510 is a high-performance, highly integrated,
low-power system-on-chip (SoC) with an ARM v6/v7-compliant superscalar
processor core, hardware graphics processing unit, video decoding
acceleration hardware and a broad range of peripherals. Targeted for
smartbooks, thin clients, mobile internet devices (MIDs) and tablet
devices, this high-performance SoC answers the need for fast processing
and a rich multimedia user experience, in a low-power design that
offers quick Internet browsing, software compatibility, HD video, 3D
graphics and high-speed connectivity. Marvell’s ARMADA 510 (88AP510)
SoC gives developers a fully integrated design that provides end users
with the portability and similar battery life experience of a
smartphone, along with the multimedia, software and browser performance
of a PC.
The D2 is not a board, is a complete system with case, power supply
etc. It lists for US$250 which seems reasonable. It comes with Ubuntu
10.04 installed. Everything is open source, including graphics.
Marvell maintains the kernel patches but I think they are upstream.
Here are some links:
http://plugcomputer.org/development-kits/d2plug.htmlhttp://www.marvell.com/application-processors/armada-500/index.jsphttps://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-d2plugdetails.aspx
Anybody have any thoughts about using this as a target platform?
Bill
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Hi,
The last few days Adrian and I have been working on reviving Base:build:arm,
and at least for armv7el we're quite near a complete build.
The current state is that we've rebuilt all current sources versions of the
toolchain for Factory, and are in a state where it can almost bootstrap
itself.
I'm saying almost because it seems the gcc4.6 compiler is miscompiling things,
so the rpm db corrupts itself quite quickly. I'm still trying to find a fix
for that. On the other side we did not get far enough with 4.4 either, so it
seems we currently do need a newer compiler.
We've also setup openSUSE:Factory:ARM, which is supposed to bootstrap itself
and become a complete Factory distribution. We'll be working on this during
the next week. Currently this project is empty and not yet building due to
some initial issues still.
Currently we're building armv7el with softfp, although people have been
indicating that we should switch to hardfp, and revive armv5el for the softfp
targets. Any other comments?
Any help in the form of submitrequests is appreciated :-)
Greetings,
Dirk
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On Fri, September 23, 2011 9:16 pm, Jan-Simon Möller wrote:
> <snip>
> Well cool - why did it take us ~ 1.5 years to notice ;) .
> I just dropped factory pack then as it is too much for just one penguin.
>> > 2) SUSE are going to be doing another HackWeek (I think it is next
>> week)
>> > which means Adrian, Alex, Dirk and anyone else that has knowledge,
experience or interest can join in the fun and pain almost full time
>> for
>> > a week - let's not kid ourselves here there is a high probability for
lots of pain, but also fun ;-) Thing is HackWeek is not just for SUSE
staff, it is also for the community. You can join in and spend some
quality time on the project with those that know a whole heap of
>> stuff,
>> > and learn from them and maybe even teach them something too.
>> > We are going to be targeting ARMv7 nothing older I'm afraid this
means
>> > CORTEX-A8 and above (looking at A9 primarily and then the new A15
when
>> > it's available), it gets too messy otherwise and it is already messy
enough.If you have knowledge and experience, please help out. If you
don't take part you have no justification to complain - you've got to
>> be
>> > in it to win it ;-)
>> > So I'm basically just giving you all a heads up on this effort, and
>> will
>> > update you as regularly as possible (I'm hoping to do something
weekly
>> > maybe). In the meantime, if you're interested join #opensuse-arm on
Freenode and the opensuse-arm mailing list. *DO NOT HARRASS* for
updates, if there is something to say it will be said. If you've got
a
>> > question, ask and *WAIT* for an answer. If you want to help out but
>> want
>> > to know how ask and *WAIT* for an answer. I will try and get
something
>> > on the wiki soon, with a todo list etc.
>> I think we should get people like Jan-Simon Möller on board as he started
>> the first openSuSE ARM build in 2009 and also the ARM build in OBS. I
think it'll kick-start the ARM port.
>> > Thanks and here's to getting our Geeko some ARMs.
> So let get a crew together - we have the knowledge and the tools. I'm
willing to do my part on the weekends and continue what I did back then.
> Time to wipe android from the transformer ?! ;)
That'll be one mean machine. (Certainly the upcoming Transformer 2 (TF201
?) with the Tegra Kal El)
I have looked into the Tegra2.
I've read this story in connection with hardfp.
http://www.slashgear.com/meego-tegra-2-drivers-could-end-android-monopoly-o…http://www.meegoexperts.com/2011/07/nvidia-meego-battle-ground/
This looks quite promising. I don't know when these drivers will be
available I couldn't find any information yet.
> Best,
> Jan-Simon
Just some information as people are looking into hardware.
The trimslice might also be an option as you'll get 45% off as a
developer, I don't know if it's still valid.
http://trimslice.com/web/dev-kit
IMHO the advantage it that there are a lot of Tegra devices Tablets etc.
The disadvantage is IMHO that the driver is closed source. I don't know if
the nouveau project could change this?
Regards,
Joop.
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On Thu, September 22, 2011 4:42 pm, Markus Slopianka wrote:
> On Donnerstag 22 September 2011 16:05:44 Andrew Wafaa wrote:
>
>> the architecture that powers most of your little devices (and some
bigger ones too). Almost all smartphones, tablets and many other
consumer devices are powered by ARM from one of the numerous licensees.
>
> The openSUSE member who were allowed to vote decided that openSUSE does
not want to run on
> those âlittle devicesâ. http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Strategy says:
>> openSUSE does not:
>> (...)
>> Work on Mobile or embedded devices.
See also link: http://news.opensuse.org/2011/08/09/strategy-done/
<quote>
The future
The team noted that the
strategy is of course not set in stone for eternity although we
probably wont go through this process every year
and asked for further feedback in the mass mailing to the membership. Some
comments did indeed come in, most notably asking for the ARM port and
mobile devices as well as the impact of the openSUSE Foundation.
In the future, the strategy documents will surely require some revision.
Once somebody in the openSUSE community steps up to do an ARM port, which
is likely to attract significant help, the document will have to be
revisited to reflect this, just like Tumbleweed resulted in a change.
</quote>
Joop
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On Thu, September 22, 2011 5:41 pm, Guillaume Gardet wrote:
>
>
> Le 22/09/2011 16:56, Greg KH a écrit :
>> On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 03:05:44PM +0100, Andrew Wafaa wrote:
>>> We are going to be targeting ARMv7 nothing older I'm afraid this means
CORTEX-A8 and above (looking at A9 primarily and then the new A15 when
it's available), it gets too messy otherwise and it is already messy
enough.If you have knowledge and experience, please help out. If you
don't take part you have no justification to complain - you've got to
be
>>> in it to win it ;-)
>> I know we talked about this at the openSUSE conference, and I'm glad
that you are starting to kick this off, it's great.
>>
>> But, what specific machine are you targeting this to run on to start
with? We need some kind of specific platform to aim for besides a
semi-vague processor level, in order to get a valid kernel and
>> tool-chain up and running. The kernel specifically is going to be a
bit difficult as each individual platform needs tweaks in order to have
it work properly due to the lack of discoverable busses (device-tree
work notwithstanding).
>>
>> In other words, what box do I need to go buy in order to help make this
possible? :)
>
> I think we need more than 1 board to check the port. I think
Beagleboard, Beagleboard xM or a Pandaboard could be a nice board to
develop openSUSE on ARM (in addition to qemu).
>
> Firstly, we have to decide what kind of ARM processor we want to
support. I think we should target ARMv7 and above Application processor
family (Cortex A8, A9 and above) to have enough "power" to run openSUSE.
I think we will have poor performances with ARMv5 for openSUSE.
> Then, we have to decide which optimization (in GCC) we want to enable. I
would say :
> - ARM EABI with ARMv7-a instructions
> - VFP (vector floating point)
> - thumb/thumb2 instructions if possible (some packages do not compile
with thumb or thumb2 enabled)
> - NEON (not all processor have it, maybe enable it as an option for
video libraries for examples to have good performances)
I think that if you look at the time that it'll take to have a stable
distro, I think it would be best to focus on the Cortex A9 (hardfp etc)
with or without NEON. Why start with a distro that is already based on
"old" hardware.
Nearly all tablets are using a Cortex A9 (mostly in the form of a Tegra
2). That has one small downside. This one doesn't have a NEON FPU at least
not one that meets the full specs.
What are the plans for a openSuSE ARM distro. Where should it run on? I
think as a distro it would be useful to have it running on a tablet like
the Asus Transformer and upcoming ARM Cortex A15 servers.
>
> Interesting pages:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ARM_microprocessor_cores
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
>
> I have experiences in embedded Linux and I have a beagleboard xM, so I
can help if you want. But I have no experiences in RPM packaging.
I would like to take part.
I have Pandaboard (OMAP4430) and Toshiba AC100 (Tegra2).
>
> AFAIK, someone worked on ARM port some time ago in google summer of
code. It could be nice to know what have been done.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Guillaume
Joop.
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On Thu, September 22, 2011 5:22 pm, Alexander Graf wrote:
>
> Am 22.09.2011 um 17:13 schrieb Pavol Rusnak <prusnak(a)opensuse.org>:
>
>> On 09/22/2011 04:56 PM, Greg KH wrote:
>>> In other words, what box do I need to go buy in order to help make
this possible? :)
>>
>> I think BeagleBoard (Cortex-A8) or PandaBoard (Cortex-A9) would be a
good start.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeagleBoard
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PandaBoard
>
> To kick thibgs off (and for easy development), I would target QEMU, so
everyone can try it out and attach gdb when needed.
>
> I agree though that we need to target one particular board for real hw
development, so things don't get more painful than they have to be. I'm
reasonably indifferent on what we're targeting there, but it should be <
200⬠and widely available.
I think the best choice would be the snowball board of the igloo
community. http://www.igloocommunity.org/http://shop.strato.com/epages/61428605.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61428605…
It'll set you back 164.00 excluding tax and postage for version with
GPS/bluetooth and wifi.
The reason why I think the snowball is the best choice is because it's
using the ST-Ericsson Nova A9500 processor (Dual Cortex A9 + Mali 400 GPU)
like the Samsung Exynos 4210 SoC. The advantage of this board over the
pandaboard is that it has a OSS video driver (GPL and MIT license), while
the SGX540 driver is closed source.
http://www.malideveloper.com/developer-resources/drivers/open-source-mali-g…
I have the the Pandaboard the problem is the current SGX drivers don't
work for hardfp, which I think is the best for a openSuSE ARM distro.
If it's decided to use this board I wouldn't mind ordering it together
with people near me, the postage is quite high 32.56 excluding tax, to
the Netherlands.
I live in Limburg (SE Netherlands), near Germany and Belgium.
>
> Either way, for bootstrapping going with an emulated platform is
probably more useful. Once we have a proper base system, let's go for
the real fun and target a board.
>
>
> Alex--
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Regards,
Joop.
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From: Greg KH [mailto:gregkh@suse.de]
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 4:57 PM
To: Andrew Wafaa
Cc: openSUSE ARM ML; openSUSE Project ML; openSUSE Factory ML
Subject: [opensuse-arm] Re: Growing some openSUSE ARMs
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 03:05:44PM +0100, Andrew Wafaa wrote:
> We are going to be targeting ARMv7 nothing older I'm afraid this means
> CORTEX-A8 and above (looking at A9 primarily and then the new A15 when
> it's available), it gets too messy otherwise and it is already messy
> enough.If you have knowledge and experience, please help out. If you
> don't take part you have no justification to complain - you've got to be
> in it to win it ;-)
I know we talked about this at the openSUSE conference, and I'm glad
that you are starting to kick this off, it's great.
But, what specific machine are you targeting this to run on to start
with? We need some kind of specific platform to aim for besides a
semi-vague processor level, in order to get a valid kernel and
tool-chain up and running. The kernel specifically is going to be a bit
difficult as each individual platform needs tweaks in order to have it
work properly due to the lack of discoverable busses (device-tree work
notwithstanding).
In other words, what box do I need to go buy in order to help make this
possible? :)
thanks,
greg k-h
-----Original Message-----
HP has some small general purpose ARM-boxes. See:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13500_na/13500_na.HTML
They are around $100,--
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