[OpenWrt-Devel] Mips Creator CI20 OpenWRT support.

[John Crispin]

On 10/12/2014 14:21, Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel wrote:
> 
> 
> On 10/12/14 12:37, José Vázquez wrote:
>> 2014-12-10 11:54 GMT+01:00, John Crispin <blogic at openwrt.org>:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/12/2014 11:46, José Vázquez wrote:
>>>> I've been working to add support for the CI20 to openwrt and,
>>>> despite some problems I'm unable to fix, the board works stable
>>>> with openwrt (more or less). :(
>>>> https://github.com/Pteridium/OpenWRT-CI20 Here is a bootlog:
>>>> http://pastebin.com/stM6Wfgz
>>>>
>>>> As someone pointed the JZ4780 is not a very good SoC (even he said
>>>> CI20 is crap), but it performs better than I initially expected,
>>>> specially in few areas. Of course it haven't the performance of
>>>> PowerPC, Marvell or IPQ806X.
>>>>
>>>> IMHO some drivers are not enough good and need to be improved (few
>>>> of them a lot, like irq), but as some of you know I haven't the
>>>> skills to make it.
>>>>
>>>> Any advice will be very welcome.
>>>>
>>>
>>> assuming that mips sells this as the reference mips platform it is
>>> quite funny that there is no real linux support.
>> What do you want to mean with no real linux support?
>> I don't understand why Ingenic is not doing an effort to add better
>> linux support for recent kernels or even add JZ4775 and JZ4780 to the
>> mainstream kernel.
>>>
>>> i think you should ping imgtec about this and ask them what their
>>> roadmap is for giving real support for the hw. i know from imgtec that
>>> they used this pcb as it was the only one they could readily source at
>>> 3-4k volume. its sort of the wrong way to select hardware. the result
>>> is what we see today. no drivers no real support and horrible network
>>> performance.
>> The network performance with the kernel 3.0.8 from Ingenic is sadly
>> horrible, but the tests made with kernel 3.18 show >75Mb/s with one
>> thread and >60Mb/s with 100 threads. I think it is a good improvement
>> if we take in mind how the DM9000 is attached to the SoC.
> 
> I'll attempt to address a few aspects shrouded in confusion..
> I do not intend to start a flame war of any sort.
> 
> The MIPS Creator is a 'new' programme from Imagination.
> 
> It is aimed at low cost development systems for use by the open source 
> community, enthusiast, hobbyist, cross platform developers etc etc.
> 
> The CI20 is just the first one with others planned as well.
> btw. Its available for pre-order now.
> 
> And as for linux, we do have a variety of linux distros running on the CI20.
> 
> We ported over yocto, angstrom, debian, android to name a few.
> http://elinux.org/CI20_Distros
> 
> Ingenic's support for the JZ4780 SoC is for kernel 3.0.8.
> We put in effort and ported lots of stuff over to 3.16.
> 
> And Jose ported openwrt and got 3.18 working too which is an excellent
> example of the community spirit we were hoping for.
> Thank-you.
> :)
> 
> I'm not saying everything is perfect.
> There is still lots to be done. Its a dev board.
> 
> We are still working on many aspects encouraging and working
> with the small but growing community around the MIPS CI20.
> 
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mips-creator-ci20
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mips-creator-ci20-dev
> 
> Cheers,
> ZubairLK
> 

i don't want to start a flame war either i am just advising people that
of all the rPI like boards one can buy the creator is the least
attractive for a huge number of reason. we just want our user to have
good hardware with good upstream kernel support. the creator simply does
not fulfill the criteria that we use to define "usable" hardware.

	John









>>>
>>> btw, i pointed out that the pcb is crap not the SoC. please be precise
>>> when quoting me
>> Sorry, my fault. My apologies.
>> The pcb, of course, could be better, but with recent kernels it
>> becomes in something enough good for some purposes. The SoC itself...
>> some of you know it so nothing to say.
>>>
>>> 	John
>>>
>>>
>>>> Regards:
>>>>
>>>> Pepe
>>>>
>>>> 2014-11-26 11:19 GMT+01:00, Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel
>>>> <Zubair.Kakakhel at imgtec.com>:
>>>>> Hi Jose,
>>>>>
>>>>> On 25/11/14 20:44, José Vázquez wrote:
>>>>>> Few weeks ago i've received a Mips CI20 and began to port it
>>>>>> to openwrt using kernel 3.18-rc4. For now only few peripherals
>>>>>> work "fine" but is more than i initially expected.
>>>>>> https://github.com/Pteridium/OpenWRT-experimental/blob/ci20-alpha/README.md
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>> Still there are a lot of peripherals to be included, but for initial
>>>>>> tests is enough for me.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The cpu performance is a bit disappointing if is taken in mind
>>>>>> that runs at 1'2GHz and the ethernet tests with iperf showed
>>>>>> <80Mb/s with one thread and <65 with 100. Compiling without
>>>>>> generic patches 132-mips_inline_dma_ops, 259-regmap_dynamic,
>>>>>> 305-mips_module_reloc, 306-mips_mem_functions_performance and
>>>>>> 309-mips_fuse_workaround I were able to enable msc1 and test
>>>>>> brcmfmac, but no success: the driver recognizes the bcm4330 but
>>>>>> it is unable to configure it correctly.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I've traced this all the way back to the dma driver :)
>>>>>
>>>>> For a working tree with wifi check out
>>>>>
>>>>> https://github.com/ZubairLK/CI20_linux/tree/wip-ci20-v3.16-wifi-bt
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>> Now i'm working to add the remaining drivers that work with kernel
>>>>>> 3.16. What i previously made was simple rebases from the code
>>>>>> wrote by Zubair Lutfullah and Paul Burton with a couple of
>>>>>> changes in pinctrl and dma drivers.
>>>>>
>>>>> Quite a few drivers with working code can be seen in my
>>>>> work-in-progress tree.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://github.com/ZubairLK/CI20_linux/tree/wip-ci20-v3.16-merge
>>>>>
>>>>> They should help.
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any comment will be very appreciated.
>>>>>
>>>>> Great work on porting OpenWRT to the CI20 :)
>>>>>
>>>>> blog about it if you have one.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers, ZubairLK
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> José
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________ openwrt-devel
>>>> mailing list openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
>>>> https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> openwrt-devel mailing list
>>> openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
>>> https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
>>>
_______________________________________________
openwrt-devel mailing list
openwrt-devel at lists.openwrt.org
https://lists.openwrt.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel