[Arm-netbook] Arm processors

[Paul Boddie]

On Thursday 2. March 2017 22.20.27 Siarhei Siamashka wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 6:22 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
> 
> <lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:49 AM, zap <zapper at openmailbox.org> wrote:
> >  reverse-engineering i have come to the conclusion is a total - and
> > 
> > criminal - waste of time and effort.  by the time all features are
> > 100% stable it's several YEARS down the line.  look at how long ago
> > the A64 was released, and the libdram code STILL HAS NOT BEEN
> > REVERSE-ENGINEERED.  it's 200 lines of code for fuck's sake.
> 
> You are just very poorly informed about the status of A64 support.
> And it's quite funny that there are people who believe you rather
> than trying to get this information first hand.

Well, I posted the results of some enquiries a few weeks ago in the context of 
the Olimex laptop. Everything sounded very promising until this appeared:

"For the moment the only working Linux Kernel which supports all A64 features 
is the Allwinner Android Kernel. This Kernel is full of binary blobs, but the 
only one which could be used for demo. Beside the binary blobs many other 
things are broken, like the power management, different drivers like the LCD 
backlight PWM, wake up from suspend, eDP converter is not set properly and 
works just in 15 bit color mode etc etc. We have the hardware for 50 laptops 
ready (developer edition), but we do not want to ship before we take care for 
the software. At other hand we do not want to ship TERES I with Android or 
RemixOS also which are complete with binary blobs and will never be Open 
Source."

Source: https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/fosdem-and-teres-i-update/

Some of that is specific to their laptop, but some of it seems relevant to any 
A64 device. Maybe you could reconcile what the Olimex people are saying with 
what you are claiming.

If you have any definitive information to the contrary, particularly about the 
boot0 code that Luke appears to be referring to, please post links to it. The 
linux-sunxi wiki was very vague on such matters last time I checked. And yes, 
I have seen the "mainlining effort" page:

https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix

Paul