Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Anand Gadiyar]

Tony, all,

The OMAP3430 ES1.0 was pretty much a test chip, with the only known board
being the 3430ES1.0 SDP. There are only a small number of these boards
outside TI and within TI, they've likely never been used in over 2 years.
It's unlikely that these boards still work on mainline, and likely have
been broken in linux-omap since the very beginning.

Between ES1.0 and ES2.0 we've had several major changes in the clock
nodes,
and IPs. However we're still keeping code/data on these in the kernel
today.

Since all later OMAP3 chips have been very similar to ES2.0, it probably
makes sense to drop support for the ES1.0. This would result in a small
but probably significant reduction in the current code. If you're okay
with dropping this support, we can slowly start working on this.

What do you think?

- Anand

Re: Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Tony Lindgren]

* Anand Gadiyar <gadiyar@ti.com> [101001 14:38]:
> Tony, all,
> 
> The OMAP3430 ES1.0 was pretty much a test chip, with the only known board
> being the 3430ES1.0 SDP. There are only a small number of these boards
> outside TI and within TI, they've likely never been used in over 2 years.
> It's unlikely that these boards still work on mainline, and likely have
> been broken in linux-omap since the very beginning.
> 
> Between ES1.0 and ES2.0 we've had several major changes in the clock
> nodes,
> and IPs. However we're still keeping code/data on these in the kernel
> today.
> 
> Since all later OMAP3 chips have been very similar to ES2.0, it probably
> makes sense to drop support for the ES1.0. This would result in a small
> but probably significant reduction in the current code. If you're okay
> with dropping this support, we can slowly start working on this.
> 
> What do you think?

No thanks!

Tony

Re: Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Paul Walmsley]

On Sat, 2 Oct 2010, Anand Gadiyar wrote:

> The OMAP3430 ES1.0 was pretty much a test chip, with the only known board
> being the 3430ES1.0 SDP. There are only a small number of these boards
> outside TI and within TI, they've likely never been used in over 2 years.
> It's unlikely that these boards still work on mainline, and likely have
> been broken in linux-omap since the very beginning.

We had linux-omap booting on the 3430SDP ES1.0 from at least 2007:

http://linux.omap.com/pipermail/linux-omap-open-source/2007-November/012160.html

We've used the 3430SDP ES1.0 as part of our regular testbed up until last 
year, when it fried itself, so as far as I know, it's worked the whole 
time.


- Paul

RE: Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Anand Gadiyar]

Paul Walmsley wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Oct 2010, Anand Gadiyar wrote:
>
> > The OMAP3430 ES1.0 was pretty much a test chip, with the  only known
board
> > being the 3430ES1.0 SDP. There are only a small number of these boards
> > outside TI and within TI, they've likely never been used in over 2
years.
> > It's unlikely that these boards still work on mainline, and likely
have
> > been broken in linux-omap since the very beginning.
>
> We had linux-omap booting on the 3430SDP ES1.0 from at least 2007:
>
>
http://linux.omap.com/pipermail/linux-omap-open-source/2007-November/01216
0.html
>
> We've used the 3430SDP ES1.0 as part of our regular testbed up until
last
> year, when it fried itself, so as far as I know, it's worked the whole
> time.
>

Okay, so we're aligned that you guys don't have an ES1 board to test,
and TI doesn't have any either. :)

I'd still like to know if anyone in the wild still cares about the board.

(I see Tony already said "No thanks", but I'd like to know anyway).

- Anand

RE: Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Paul Walmsley]

On Sat, 2 Oct 2010, Anand Gadiyar wrote:

> Okay, so we're aligned that you guys don't have an ES1 board to test,
> and TI doesn't have any either. :)
> 
> I'd still like to know if anyone in the wild still cares about the board.
> 
> (I see Tony already said "No thanks", but I'd like to know anyway).

Why would we want to remove support for a board that should work fine with 
linux-omap and isn't causing any problems with existing code?


- Paul

RE: Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Anand Gadiyar]

Paul Walmsley wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Oct 2010, Anand Gadiyar wrote:
>
> > Okay, so we're aligned that you guys don't have an ES1 board to test,
> > and TI doesn't have any either. :)
> >
> > I'd still like to know if anyone in the wild still cares about the
board.
> >
> > (I see Tony already said "No thanks", but I'd like to know anyway).
>
> Why would we want to remove support for a board that should work fine
with
> linux-omap and isn't causing any problems with existing code?

I'm not sure it works fine, and if there are no users that care about
the board, then it would be nice to drop the support. If the board
works fine today, that's good, but has anyone tested the current
kernel on that board?

(we're struggling to keep linux-omap working on boards available now,
why support something that nobody cares about. It's not like I'm asking
3430 support to be dropped)

- the ES1 chip has never been available to the outside world beyond
sampling quantities
- no new developments are likely to happen on that board
- nobody's likely to have one of these around and care to boot it up
- there are plenty of replacements like the beagles which are lower
  cost, easier to obtain, and can beat an ES1 in speed

I'm okay having support for the board if someone's actually using it.
It's not such a big deal. It was just a thought - it came up because
Manju was looking at old errata docs, and came across something that
was specific to an ES1, but we realized there was no way to test it.

- Anand

RE: Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Paul Walmsley]

On Sat, 2 Oct 2010, Anand Gadiyar wrote:

> Manju was looking at old errata docs, and came across something that
> was specific to an ES1, but we realized there was no way to test it.

Sounds like something that should at least go in as a comment to the 
affected code.


- Paul

Re: Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Felipe Balbi]

On Fri, Oct 01, 2010 at 04:58:32PM -0500, Tony Lindgren wrote:
>* Anand Gadiyar <gadiyar@ti.com> [101001 14:38]:
>> Tony, all,
>>
>> The OMAP3430 ES1.0 was pretty much a test chip, with the only known board
>> being the 3430ES1.0 SDP. There are only a small number of these boards
>> outside TI and within TI, they've likely never been used in over 2 years.
>> It's unlikely that these boards still work on mainline, and likely have
>> been broken in linux-omap since the very beginning.
>>
>> Between ES1.0 and ES2.0 we've had several major changes in the clock
>> nodes,
>> and IPs. However we're still keeping code/data on these in the kernel
>> today.
>>
>> Since all later OMAP3 chips have been very similar to ES2.0, it probably
>> makes sense to drop support for the ES1.0. This would result in a small
>> but probably significant reduction in the current code. If you're okay
>> with dropping this support, we can slowly start working on this.
>>
>> What do you think?
>
>No thanks!

yeah, I don't like the idea of simply dropping support either and would
be very happy if I had an old h2 board to fix up the omap_udc.c code
which is horrible :-p

-- 
balbi

Re: Dropping omap3430 ES1.0 support in mainline

[Cousson, Benoit]

On 10/2/2010 12:28 AM, Anand Gadiyar wrote:
> Paul Walmsley wrote:
>> On Sat, 2 Oct 2010, Anand Gadiyar wrote:
>>
>>> Okay, so we're aligned that you guys don't have an ES1 board to test,
>>> and TI doesn't have any either. :)
>>>
>>> I'd still like to know if anyone in the wild still cares about the
> board.
>>>
>>> (I see Tony already said "No thanks", but I'd like to know anyway).
>>
>> Why would we want to remove support for a board that should work fine
> with
>> linux-omap and isn't causing any problems with existing code?
>
> I'm not sure it works fine, and if there are no users that care about
> the board, then it would be nice to drop the support. If the board
> works fine today, that's good, but has anyone tested the current
> kernel on that board?
>
> (we're struggling to keep linux-omap working on boards available now,
> why support something that nobody cares about. It's not like I'm asking
> 3430 support to be dropped)
>
> - the ES1 chip has never been available to the outside world beyond
> sampling quantities
> - no new developments are likely to happen on that board
> - nobody's likely to have one of these around and care to boot it up
> - there are plenty of replacements like the beagles which are lower
>    cost, easier to obtain, and can beat an ES1 in speed
>
> I'm okay having support for the board if someone's actually using it.
> It's not such a big deal. It was just a thought - it came up because
> Manju was looking at old errata docs, and came across something that
> was specific to an ES1, but we realized there was no way to test it.

If this is the SDMA bug we are talking about, it was unfortunately 
already there in OMAP2420. For some reason I didn't find it in 2430 
errata, but since it was still there in 3430 ES1, we can assume that 
2430 also has the issue.


That being said, ES1 devices for both OMAP3 and OMAP4 were supposed to 
be engineering samples.
There is no product out there with OMAP3 ES1, and same thing is 
happening with 4430 ES1.

So, it makes sense to keep supporting them during the transition, but as 
soon as everybody is upgraded to the next production version, what the 
point to keep maintaining these buggy devices?
Hopefully the auto-destroy mode after 2 years seems to work fine :-)

Regards,
Benoit