Allwinner R8 in CHIP: now easier to solder

"A big reason that I am a fan of CHIP is that it is Open Source Hardware"

No, the GPU in the R8 is proprietary so you can't use it for anything that the closed drivers don't allow even though the

compute power of the GPU could be useful for several things other than video output. This violates a basic tenant of

open source hardware.

CHIP is Open Source Hardware as the Schematics, Board Layout and Bill of Material are released under an Open Source license.

Next Thing Co has written about their approach to Open Source development:

     https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds-first-9-computer/posts/1247188

[We] will be working very closely with Free Electrons and the C.H.I.P. Kernel Hacker backers over the next 6 months to make sure C.H.I.P.'s software is open, standard and most importantly FREE.

 

Ultimately, our goal is to have as few binary blobs present in the source tree required to use C.H.I.P. as possible. Presently, binary blobs are required for 3 parts of the R8 SoC software stack:

• ARM Mali 400 Driver (3D graphics acceleration)
• C2D (2D acceleration)
• CedarX (Video Hardware Encoding/Decoding)

 

Our plan is to mainline support for user-space drivers for these binary blobs. But we're also actively exploring ways that we can eliminate the need for these binary blobs altogether. We will also provide Chipsters who want a completely FOSS C.H.I.P. OS builds that are blob-free!

Free Electrons is adding support to the mainline Linux kernel for CHIP including the Allwinner R8: [PATCH 0/5] ARM: sunxi: Introduce CHIP support

They are also upstreaming U-Boot (the bootloader) support: [U-Boot] [PATCH 0/6] ARM: sunxi: Introduce CHIP support

Free Electrons engineer Maxime Ripard posted: "Debian 8 and XFCE running on the CHIP, on top of the DRM / KMS driver!"

For reference:

• Linux kernel: https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP-linux
• U-Boot: https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP-u-boot
• HW Design Files: https://github.com/NextThingCo/CHIP-Hardware
• Docs: http://docs.nextthing.co/

cheers,

drew

In addition to the three binary blobs required for the Allwinner R8 SoC software stack, the C.H.I.P.'s Realtek RTL8723BS WiFi/Bluetooth module also requires one, correct?

The RTL8723BS is using the Linux kernel driver: RTL871X

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/staging/rtl8712

There is a NextThingCo RTL8723BS repo:

https://github.com/NextThingCo/RTL8723BS

I'm not certain but there may be firmware that gets uploaded to the RTL8723BS hardware by the driver. This would be code executing on the embedded processor in the RTL8723BS.

I noticed this commit comment:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/c84a7028cc4957e39af5ed8b1a3c8acda24a2a89#diff-a6781a66e7b7b79a23c2d803b720c754

I stand by my original statement, you can't have "open hardware" with closed hardware inside it. GPUs are a particular problem in the ARM SoC world so

everybody shouting "open hardware" does their best to ignore them. Schematics (essential) and board layouts (meh, don't really care about this one) are

a start but it is still the CHIPs that do all the work and without full hardware specs (or in the case of GPUs, ANY hardware specs), they can not be open

hardware. How more obvious can this be ?

The definition of Open Source Hardware requires that editable design files should be published under an Open Source license.  For electronics, this would include schematics, board layout and BOM.  CHIP meets these requirements.

     Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Statement of Principles 1.0

     http://www.oshwa.org/definition/

 

Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design. The hardware’s source, the design from which it is made, is available in the preferred format for making modifications to it. Ideally, open source hardware uses readily-available components and materials, standard processes, open infrastructure, unrestricted content, and open-source design tools to maximize the ability of individuals to make and use hardware. Open source hardware gives people the freedom to control their technology while sharing knowledge and encouraging commerce through the open exchange of designs.

More clarification about the elements of an Open Source Hardware Project:

     Best Practices for Open-Source Hardware 1.0

     http://www.oshwa.org/sharing-best-practices/

Lets hope they manage to create opensource replacements for the graphics/Video accelerator components as they would be generally applicable with any SOC who has that IP included into them..nice one

Gary Stewart wrote:

 

I stand by my original statement, you can't have "open hardware" with closed hardware inside it. GPUs are a particular problem in the ARM SoC world...

The official definition of Open-Source Hardware (OSHW) does not require that everything inside chips be open.  For hardware to be OSHW, it's necessary and sufficient that you have enough documentation to make your own (possibly modified) copies of the board, have permission (license) to do so, and can obtain the chips through ordinary distribution and without NDAs (so you can't use RasPi's BCM2835/36).  The OSHW definition only covers the hardware.  It does not consider whether it's possible to write open-source software for every feature of the chips included in that hardware.

I totally agree that it's a bummer that (most) GPUs and all FPGAs (except for Lattice iCE40) have undocumented internals, and I advocate for open documentation at every opportunity.  However, even with closed GPUs and FPGAs, it's still useful to have OSHW that include those chips and it moves things in the right direction.  Many important examples of OSHW have closed features in their chips: BeagleBoard/Bone (GPU), Novena laptop (GPU and FPGA), and Gadget Factory Papilio FPGA boards.  Yes, it would be wonderful to have their GPUs and FPGAs open, but having OSHW PC boards is a lot better than nothing.

The CHIP's Allwinner R8 has a ARM Mali 400 GPU.  Open Source drivers for Mali has been a disappointment thus far.  There is the Lima project but that appears to have lost momentum: http://limadriver.org/

I've heard rumors from Embedded Linux Conf that ARM themselves might make an effort... but who knows if that will happen.

The community wiki for Allwinner SoC notes:

     Linux mainlining effort
     https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Unlikely

These are too far off the track third party drivers making it unlikely they will ever get accepted mainline.

• Mali driver (will not happen unless libv gets a proper lima driver out)

Linux kernel engineer Maxime Ripard replied to me yesterday on Google Plus regarding the DRM / KMS driver:

     https://plus.google.com/u/0/107357811086496166266/posts/Bu4VSsKSPuC

no it doesn't require any blob in userspace, and yeah, it's a pristine Debian Jessie with xfce installed, without any additional configuration

The CHIP's Allwinner R8 has a ARM Mali 400 GPU.  Open Source drivers for Mali has been a disappointment thus far.  There is the Lima project but that appears to have lost momentum: http://limadriver.org/

I've heard rumors from Embedded Linux Conf that ARM themselves might make an effort... but who knows if that will happen.

The community wiki for Allwinner SoC notes:

     Linux mainlining effort
     https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Unlikely

These are too far off the track third party drivers making it unlikely they will ever get accepted mainline.

• Mali driver (will not happen unless libv gets a proper lima driver out)

Linux kernel engineer Maxime Ripard replied to me yesterday on Google Plus regarding the DRM / KMS driver:

     https://plus.google.com/u/0/107357811086496166266/posts/Bu4VSsKSPuC

no it doesn't require any blob in userspace, and yeah, it's a pristine Debian Jessie with xfce installed, without any additional configuration