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3.14 Kernel

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3.14 Kernel

Posted at 12/31/2014 23:33:20      View:12824 | Replies:9        Print     [Copy Link] 1#
Having spent many days figuring out (or banging my head) how to get a working kernel built from sources (non Android). I finally managed to get a kernel to boot .  It's no way complete but hey it's a start, for those interested dmesg output is here.  You will see references to chromium OS because it based on that source tree but don't expect chromium OS to appear soon. My test rootfs was the tizen supplied image in post in another thread.
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Posted at 1/1/2015 06:16:09      2#
Updated original post with pastebin link and its?here.?
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Posted at 1/11/2015 02:39:21      3#
Some progress to report ...   screen output to hdmi via the drm driver. Screen shot here. It's still early days but this is progress in the right direction.
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Posted at 1/13/2015 03:16:13      4#
Any chance the firefly team can request the MALI r5p0 userspace binaries from Rockchip (or whatever they can provide) ? I could then starting looking at GPU support.
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Posted at 1/20/2015 03:49:11      5#
A bit more progress .. ethernet working, cpu frequency scaling, serial console login and booting Ubuntu 14.04 (see output) . Next challenge is to see if we can get anywhere with gpu/vpu.  
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Posted at 1/24/2015 01:02:03      6#

Re: 3.14 Kernel

Some progress with GPU see here . However lots of things are broken which partly might explain why the performance is low.
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Posted at 1/26/2015 02:48:34      7#

Re: 3.14 Kernel

Want to see some GPU acceleration? Look ... here
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Posted at 1/30/2015 17:05:12      8#

Re: 3.14 Kernel

I would suggest you don't attempt unless your are experienced at kernel development because:


1. There are differences between the Firefly hardware and the Rockchip Chrome OS devices. Therefore you need to understand these differences and debug the kernel when there are problems.

2. The kernel is not complete there are a number of patches which are still in review.

3. The Mali drivers lacks performance because the binaries is old.

4. The state of the VPU support in kernel is unknown and isn't documented.

5. There's no/little documentation for the kernel drivers so you will have dig into the driver code to work out what is going on. You can spend days/weeks on this.

6. You also need to invest some (or considerable) time to understand the Chromium source tree to under what  patches are pulled in to build the Chromium rootfs for RK3288 which in it's itself can be time consuming.

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Posted at 1/31/2015 19:15:09      9#

Re: 3.14 Kernel

"is there a chance to get this working for the regular linaro branch (does sound complicated since i dont understand the chromium-sources..)."


Little chance of that of happening without porting all the patches across. 'linux-rockchip' mainline should hopefully be adding hdmi/vga support so this may help.


I think its going take 1-2 months before you see working Mali drivers for fb/X11 furthermore given these will be the first release of the binaries there may be issues. Its also important to point out that the X11 drivers only accelerate egl/gles content (bettered suited to a full screen application) therefore don't expect a fully accelerated X11 desktop in the near future. This can have a detrimental impact for example running HTML5 code in a browser may still be software rendered which can hinder your applications performance.

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Posted at 2/3/2015 16:42:48      10#

Re: 3.14 Kernel

Hi Jonas,

Unfortunately as of today in my opinion Firefly is a 'Android' development board. Like most of the ARM boards Linux software support intends to rely on a community effort which in turn relies on good co-operation from the SOC vendor (especially for CPU/VPU support). Historically the Chinese SOC vendors (AllWinner/Rockchip) haven't been willing to work closely with the community which has meant that most boards die a slow death.


We should see fb drivers released by ARM by the end of this week (fingers crossed) which should give us some GPU support unfortunately I had to raise the issue with ARM because Rockchip were unwilling to supply them (which isn't a good sign). From what I understand Rockchip should be releasing there own drivers in the forth coming months but will target the 'TopMetal' platform which must be a different h/w design from the current reference designs.


Again, in my opinion the challenges facing the Firefly are:


1. Application developers want an 'out of box' experience and not having to endure the arduous task of building kernels, working out how to get GPU/VPU support etc ...

2. The market is saturated with ARM boards and the lower end $35 boards have bigger community support plus closer co-operation with the SOC vendor.

3. The development community aren't willing to embrace the newer generation of boards because of the potential lack of co-operation from the SOC vendor based on historical experience.

4. The board is expensive (including taxes + shipping) and I would argue competes in the x86 space where Linux support is far superior.

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