Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH v4 00/20] Add support for AM62x-SK HS-FS devices

From: Andreas Dannenberg via buildroot <buildroot@buildroot.org>
To: Romain Naour <romain.naour@smile.fr>
Cc: Dario Binacchi <dario.binacchi@amarulasolutions.com>,
	linux-amarula@amarulasolutions.com,
	Asaf Kahlon <asafka7@gmail.com>,
	Xuanhao Shi <X15000177@gmail.com>,
	James Hilliard <james.hilliard1@gmail.com>,
	Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@bootlin.com>,
	buildroot@buildroot.org,
	Michael Nazzareno Trimarchi <michael@amarulasolutions.com>,
	Alexander Sverdlin <alexander.sverdlin@gmail.com>,
	bryce@redpinelabs.com, Anand Gadiyar <gadiyar@ti.com>
Subject: Re: [Buildroot] [PATCH v4 00/20] Add support for AM62x-SK HS-FS devices
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2024 13:31:36 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20240223193136.sod3vx4t3pkqfcqd@dasso> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1a7ab8e6-bd43-4191-ad95-12e40f3a5c51@smile.fr>

Hi Romain,

On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 10:36:51PM +0100, Romain Naour wrote:

<snip>

> >> About existing boot flow, I found two recent commit in u-boot that state that
> >> the "Split binary" (that requires sysfw.itb) is already a legacy boot flow:
> > 
> > It's called "legacy boot flow" because it was the boot flow used on the
> > first K3 devices that were released (AM65x, J721E). This boot flow was
> > not used on follow-on devices. The characteristics of this boot flow is
> > that the initial FW image that gets loaded (tiboot3.bin) doesn't contain
> > any device firmwares, but only a bootloader (such as U-Boot SPL). Then
> > this boot loader will load the System Firmware firmware + config data
> > blob (sysfw.itb) into the dedicated core (called "DMSC" = Device Manager
> > and Security Controller). And then addiitonal boot stages will be
> > loaded. These devices require this boot flow, and with this it is
> > required to be supported by U-Boot (and any Linux distribution or build
> > systems that build on that).
> > 
> > TI is still making/selling those "legacy boot flow" devices, and will
> > continue to do so for a very long time. One promiment community
> > incarnation that you are probably aware of is the BeagleBone AI-64.
> 
> Thank you for the detailed explanation!
> 
> I previouly worked on a AM57xx SoC that is nowaday legacy SoC, the latest
> ti-kernel 6.1 doesn't support some of the driver that where available in
> ti-kernel 5.10 (prueth 100M, RPMsg Sockets over virtio-rpmsg transport (use for
> ARM-DSP IPC3.x), TI-RTOS (the csl-common package was also removed from meta-ti)).
> 
> Also the TI SDK on this plateform doesn't seems very active [1].

since you brought this up I wanted to add some additional context here.
Older devices like AM57xx (AM335x and AM437x fall into the same bucket)
will get what we call "LTS refresh SDKs" every year, rather than
multiple drops per year as we do for the more recent devices. As for
AM57xx specifically that refresh is currently targeted for e/o March
2024 and will be known as "SDK 9.2". There shouldn't be any feature
regressions, and the only "new" thing (in addition to an all-refreshed
SW baseline with 6.1 kernel and 2023.04 U-Boot) will be some Y2K38 issue
fix on Linux. TI will be making and selling those devices for a very
long time to come, and the annual refresh is seen as a good compromise
between keeping things refreshed periodically and up to date while
limiting the amount of repeat work/effort.

--
Andreas Dannenberg
Texas Instruments Inc

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