[U-Boot] Status of Altera Aria 10 in upstream

[U-Boot] Status of Altera Aria 10 in upstream

[Jan Kiszka]

Hi all,

just a quick check because I received reports internally that things are
not working: Is latest U-boot able to drive Aria 10 SoC FGPA boards
completely, or are there still some features missing that downstream
SDKs only contain?

We need upstream U-boot features for a target but are currently stuck
with a 2014-based downstream branch that looks too different to compare
quickly at feature level.

Thanks in advance!
Jan

-- 
Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, CT RDA IOT SES-DE
Corporate Competence Center Embedded Linux

[U-Boot] Status of Altera Aria 10 in upstream

[Friedrich Daniel]

Hello Jan,

let me quote my mail to Claudio, who asked more or less the same on March 7th(see mail below). 
Personally, hoped that someone from Intel/Altera has the guts to answer this question or at least the Maintainer of the socfpga.
I'm by far not good at u-boot, so it is just hacked together what was needed for the project so far.

If any Maintainer reads this, I suggest removing the Arria10 from the current master branch as it is unusable(system does not even boot) for any one the way it is now.

> Hello Claudio,
>
> I tried it as well and failed. My personal guess is that Altera/Intel never pushed proper support into the official u-boot mainline.
> Even there master-branch (https://github.com/altera-opensource/u-boot-socfpga/tree/master) does not work. For "just a user" it is very frustrating getting a new board abut have to use old software.
> And it seems Intel does not care in providing documentation, up-to-date software or maintaining the released code.
> For example if you look closer into the source code in the socfpga_v2014.10_arria10_bringup-branch there is a module called cff which loads the rbf-file in early release mode.
> I could  not find anything similar in the latest branches(neither from denx not altera). Also the images generated from the latest releases generates not the proper format needed to boot from an Arria10.
>
> So for my needs I used (https://github.com/altera-opensource/u-boot-socfpga/tree/socfpga_v2014.10_arria10_bringup) which is the version used in the Altera/Intel tools But changed it to my needs (loading > rbf-file, kernel and devicetree from EXT, setting u-boot environment to my needs etc.) I compile everything with the toolchain from yocto V2.4. and so far it works good.
> My changes are made public here(https://github.com/nanosurf-ag/u-boot-socfpga) but this might still subject to change.
>
> Hope this helps
> dan


Cheers
Dan

[U-Boot] Status of Altera Aria 10 in upstream

[Jan Kiszka]

Hi Dan,

On 2018-03-12 22:29, Friedrich Daniel wrote:
> Hello Jan,
> 
> let me quote my mail to Claudio, who asked more or less the same on March 7th(see mail below). 
> Personally, hoped that someone from Intel/Altera has the guts to answer this question or at least the Maintainer of the socfpga.
> I'm by far not good at u-boot, so it is just hacked together what was needed for the project so far.
> 
> If any Maintainer reads this, I suggest removing the Arria10 from the current master branch as it is unusable(system does not even boot) for any one the way it is now.
> 
>> Hello Claudio,
>>
>> I tried it as well and failed. My personal guess is that Altera/Intel never pushed proper support into the official u-boot mainline.
>> Even there master-branch (https://github.com/altera-opensource/u-boot-socfpga/tree/master) does not work. For "just a user" it is very frustrating getting a new board abut have to use old software.
>> And it seems Intel does not care in providing documentation, up-to-date software or maintaining the released code.
>> For example if you look closer into the source code in the socfpga_v2014.10_arria10_bringup-branch there is a module called cff which loads the rbf-file in early release mode.
>> I could  not find anything similar in the latest branches(neither from denx not altera). Also the images generated from the latest releases generates not the proper format needed to boot from an Arria10.
>>
>> So for my needs I used (https://github.com/altera-opensource/u-boot-socfpga/tree/socfpga_v2014.10_arria10_bringup) which is the version used in the Altera/Intel tools But changed it to my needs (loading > rbf-file, kernel and devicetree from EXT, setting u-boot environment to my needs etc.) I compile everything with the toolchain from yocto V2.4. and so far it works good.
>> My changes are made public here(https://github.com/nanosurf-ag/u-boot-socfpga) but this might still subject to change.
>>
>> Hope this helps
>> dan
> 
> 
> Cheers
> Dan
> 

I informed myself these days (ELC-NA...) about the situation from U-boot
perspective. I'd still love to hear an official Intel statement as well.

For now I told our internal user that there is something to do (though
apparently not a lot - with the right people on the code) in order to
get a solution we can safely ship in a long living critical
infrastructure system. The current situation is suboptimal, for a number
of reasons, and that can easily disappoint our user about their hardware
supplier.

Thanks,
Jan

-- 
Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, CT RDA IOT SES-DE
Corporate Competence Center Embedded Linux