[Arm-netbook] Mediatek MT6575 SoC - how good is it ?

[lkcl luke]

On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Piyush Verma <piyush.pv at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Alexey,
>
> The biggest problem with MTK as I know is the source release.
>
> As I know there is not any source release from MTK even for manufacturer.
>
> MTK just provide PCBA limited information + Binary to manufacturer.
>
>
> So there is not way to work with MTK.

 in a word, yes.  GPL violations on an endemic scale.  the taiwanese
companies have a habit of completely doing the design work, and all
the software (regardless of whether it's GPL'd or not) and all the
manufacturing, on your behalf.

 i heard that haralde welte has been working on an education programme
for taiwanese companies, for some considerable time.  the "policy" of
assuming total control over the entire product is borne out of a
complete failure of chinese companies to cope with or aid or assist
with the product development in any useful way.  the amount of
resources consumed by their "questions" is merely a financial
distraction.

 in the case of smartphones where the binary GSM Radio firmware is
running on the CPU (such as with the MT6575 and also with the ST
Ericsson U8500 "Nova" series and above) there is an additional
problem: FCC and other Certifications *require* that there be no
"modifications" made to the O.S.

 the fact that it is possible to hack into such phones very very
easily and do things like re-program the power output of the GSM Radio
ROM simply by poking a memory location, as is known to be the case
with some of the lower-cost HTC Smartphones, thanks to the
reverse-engineering done by xda-developers engineers, seems to have
completely escaped the FCC and other Certification organisations'
attention.

 but anyway: the Certification organisations are at least trying to
keep us "safe" from having our heads melted by radio waves, or our
ears blown off by lithium battery fire, and i kinda appreciate their
situation.

 bottom line is: using a smartphone CPU with an integrated Base-Band
for any mass-volume Software (Libre) Project is fairly unlikely, but i
*do* want to tackle it at some point, once there are enough funds
($Nm) to do so.

l.