[Arm-netbook] PYRA - Blobs -

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Sat, Jul 30, 2016 at 3:28 PM, Wolfgang Romey (hier)
<hier at wolfgangromey.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I found this on the PYRA-Homepage:
>
>  Texas Instruments OMAP 5 SoC
>
>     2x ARM Cortex-A15 @ 1.5Ghz with NEON SIMD
>     2x ARM Cortex-M4
>     PowerVR™ SGX544-MP2
>     Vivante GC320 2D Accelerator
>
> Can anybody tell me which of this Hardware contains proprietary hardware and
> which of the manufactors are gpl-violaters?

 i don't believe they'd be silly enough to use gpl-violating code in
the pyra.  the powervr GPU is however proprietary.  the vivante GC320
has been reverse-engineered quite a while ago.  slightly more
importantly is external peripherals such as WIFI

 https://www.pyra-handheld.com/wiki/index.php?title=WiFi
 so the firmware is here:
 https://github.com/TI-OpenLink/firmwares/tree/master/ti-connectivity

 highly unlikely that they provide source.

 don't know if the OMAP5 requires proprietary bootloader sequences....
would be surprised if it did: TI are quite good about not needing
that.  their SoCs end up in military equipment so having them be
software-programmable or dependent on some external IC to tell the
processor to boot?  generally bad...

 so this *could* be RYF Endorseable (by leaving out the PowerVR
libraries and associated kernel modules).... if they hadn't included
the hard-wired WIFI peripheral.  if they can manufacture versions of
the pyra that don't include that, they could actually apply for RYF
Certification.

l.