Re: ADI Blackfin porting for kernel-2.6.13

Robin Getz
2005-11-01T15:48:28Z

On Sat 10/22/2005, Jacques asked:
>Does this patch is only for Blackfin processor or it add some support for
>fusiv [1] communications processor that are in residential Gateway ?

The Blackfin/uClinux 2.6.x patch which was prepared (and will be
maintained) by a separate team(1) who is not working on any fusiv
processors (which are MIPS-based).

>If no, do you know if analog plans to realease the linux 2.4/2.6
>modification that have been made in order to support these processors ?

Not sure - Since the two groups are separate, no one on the team here knows
the plans of the Fusiv team.

>IRRC some Sagem residential Gateways (will) run on Linux OS and the users
>sould be able ask for the GPL code.

So, the best place to go would be to Sagem (or any company shipping a
product with Embedded Linux/uClinux). Since they are responsible for
distributing the binary, it is their responsibility to make the source
released under GPL or derived from previously GPL'ed software available.

If you received a product from Sagem, which you believe includes GPL'ed
software - call them and ask for the source:
http://www.sagem.com/index.php?id=445&L=0

If you received a development kit, or other reference design from ADI,
which you believe includes GPL'ed software, call them and ask for the source:
http://www.analog.com/salesdir/continent.asp

Thanks
-Robin

<shameless plug>
(1)There is a small group of open source developers inside of ADI, focusing
on the support of the Blackfin processor with various open source projects.
We have people dedicated to:
- the FSF's Toolchain (gcc, gdb, binutils) where our patches have
been accepted into the mainline projects (still working on the
last kinks gdb pthreads support).
- Das U-Boot as our chip initialization and bootloader. Booting from the
network is very powerful in many embedded environments.
- the GNU/uClinux kernel (Luke's recent patch for 2.6.14), where end
products are beginning to ship in volume.
- open source hardware design - free (speech) software isn't any good
on closed hardware. All of our schematics, gerbers, PCB manufacturing
files are released under the GPL, and are mostly avalible from
Digikey, at sub $225 price points.
- Simulation support with Skyeye
http://gro.clinux.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=2619

Our team completely embraces the open source model (release early, release
often) - using open source tools (GForge, Tinderbox, cvs, dokuwiki),
publishing everything we do/understand on the web(2). We have been
responsible for contributions in other open source projects:
- helped port Linux Test Project (LTP) so it could run on a
uClinux/uclibc/no-mmu environment
- helped port Speex to the Blackfin, to run a completely open
source embedded VoIP phone, based on Linphone.
- helping update uClinux-dist to other main-line projects.
- others, but I am starting to get a little wordy.

The combination of Blackfin/uClinux is pretty compelling - the hardware(3)
has a pretty good span of price(as low as $4.95)/performance(BF561 include
Dual Core, 600MHz each) & I won't go into the benefits of uClinux and open
source here :)

If anyone is interested in looking at things running on real hardware, I do
have a limited amount of hardware I can lend people for poking/porting.
Some of the things we have working are pretty cool[4]. Send me a private email.

</shameless plug>

[2]http://blackfin.uclinux.org
[2]http://docs.blackfin.uclinux.org
[2]http://cvs.blackfin.uclinux.org
[3]http://www.analog.com/processors/processors/blackfin/index.html
[4]http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9272421886.html