Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2019 14:50:10 +0900 From: Denis Polygalov <dpolyg@gmail.com> To: Ian Lepore <ian@freebsd.org>, Johannes Lundberg <johalun@FreeBSD.org>, freebsd-arm@freebsd.org Subject: Re: raspberry pi 4 Message-ID: <2de8a1a4-51f8-f375-0dd9-0fa59d841063@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <551442d20b86697759baaf250ddfe6e7eaf2c423.camel@freebsd.org> References: <20190709161243.GC4904@mon.zyxst.net> <HZPxf8oyosxDF2kVxJHXYBDY9ULZtF5VHU8FnEslTS9JS-dMsA1G61OnXEHmL0xUVPqZTeF2Q_Z9F58Su81uDDiX86do5d3mqFG7q4teJlw=@protonmail.com> <CAHxjC0-VJmQK=feqAb2H9sSAwHXo8=KTYr3Os72WBB58SaoiMg@mail.gmail.com> <20190710031750.GB28522@lonesome.com> <5fcba83d-2207-accc-ab33-a33085c80753@FreeBSD.org> <35ec822f78362b6b88e25f399fddcf501a327722.camel@freebsd.org> <2aabd4ed-67b8-0ea3-5616-fb4f1d418ba0@FreeBSD.org> <551442d20b86697759baaf250ddfe6e7eaf2c423.camel@freebsd.org>
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> RPi and Beaglebone. These are "legacy" boards that were the first ones > to run freebsd when we started adding armv6/7 support. > The other arm32 things basically range from "supported, but not much > ongoing activity" to "nobody has touched it for years, hard to call it > supported". One interesting thing about Beaglebone - seems like it provides functionality missing in other SBC including RPis: https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/586.php (I don't know does FreeBSD support RPUs in BB image or not) 'Zooming out' this discussion and trying to generalize various interests of people playing/working with SCBs it seems for me that there are 3 categories of boards: 1. A board interacting with user mostly via screen/GUI, (laptop, POS terminal, kiosk) so the GPU support is essential. All other peripheral devices are more or less standard. 2. High I/O throughput and headless (router, NAS). In this case obviously things like data pipes: SATA/PCIe/USB3.0/1G/10G Ethernet are essential but the rest of peripheral devices are standard. 3. SBC designed to be connected to non-standard hardware (sensors, actuators etc.) and require (close to)hard real time support. Regards, Denis. On 12/07/2019 12:58 am, Ian Lepore wrote: > On Wed, 2019-07-10 at 12:19 -0700, Johannes Lundberg wrote: >> On 7/10/19 11:10 AM, Ian Lepore wrote: >>> On Wed, 2019-07-10 at 10:30 -0700, Johannes Lundberg wrote: >>>> On 7/9/19 8:17 PM, Mark Linimon wrote: >>>>> On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 09:52:43AM +0900, Denis Polygalov wrote: >>>>>> but please let's enhance support of the good OS (FreeBSD) >>>>>> on a *good* boards. >>>>> >>>>> Despite any technical advantages or disadvantages, RPI has the most >>>>> mindshare, and we would be foolish to avoid it. >>>> >>>> Indeed. SBCs come and go. They are EOL before we even have a boot >>>> prompt. Personally I would like to see a joint effort focused on one >>>> board and make that work really well. Maybe an incentive would be the >>>> foundation throwing money at it in the form of rewards for well defined >>>> sub projects. The one most likely to survive longest is RPI but there >>>> might be other valid alternatives as well. Thanks to Emmanuel's efforts >>>> maybe Pine64 is a good alternative? I'm happy to help with graphics if >>>> we would do such focused effort but as long as we're all over the place >>>> I don't see much point in contributing with the limited time I have... >>>> >>>> Please note, this is not criticism in any way and I'm not trying to >>>> diminish the work developers do on these boards. Everyone is free to >>>> work on what they want. Question is, do we want a single board computer >>>> that's actually usable for something or only as tinker toys? Without >>>> direction, I'm afraid they will always be half working tinker toys due >>>> to the limited amount of developers we have. >>>> >>>> If anyone disagrees, I welcome your point of view. >>>> >>> >>> What you call a "half working tinker toy" is what we use to build and >>> ship a dozen different products at $work. >> >> My apologies if I offended anyone. I didn't know that we had such good >> support that you could actually ship products based on it. Maybe I ask >> what board that is? >> >> > > We use Freescale/Nxp imx6 SOMs from Boundary Devices, SolidRun, and > Technexion (Wandboard's upstream vendor). Usually we design our own > carrier/motherboards and mount the vendor SOMs on them. Sometimes > we're able to just directly use the vendor's carrier boards when we > don't need an fpga or other highly customized stuff on the board. The > products we build are all related in one way or another to precision > timekeeping. > > I think I'd sum up the state of freebsd arm32 support like this... > > RPi and Beaglebone. These are "legacy" boards that were the first ones > to run freebsd when we started adding armv6/7 support. There weren't > that many boards available back then and often the developer/eval board > cost hundreds of dollars, whereas these were cheap and easily > available. All the current arm32 devs hate working on the crappy old > code for these boards and pretty much only apply fixes, reluctantly, as > needed or requested by users. > > imx6. These are pretty well supported because I get paid to support > them. Audio and video support is weak because we don't use those at > $work (and I don't have a strong personal interest in those areas). > The most important thing that's missing is pcie support. > > Allwinner. Originally these boards were barely supported, because docs > were hard to get. Something changed and the docs became available, and > several developers adopted the family out of personal interest, so it's > currently the most-complete and best-supported arm32 family on freebsd. > > Marvell. Supported by the folks at Semihalf, mostly because people pay > them to do so. The 32-bit marvell world isn't very active these days. > > The other arm32 things basically range from "supported, but not much > ongoing activity" to "nobody has touched it for years, hard to call it > supported". > > -- Ian > > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-arm@freebsd.org mailing list > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arm > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-arm-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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