Roadmap for AST2500?

[Joel Stanley]

Hello Rick,

On Thu, Jun 2, 2016 at 1:05 PM, Rick Altherr <raltherr at google.com> wrote:
> AFAIK, Zaius will have an option for NC-SI in addition to an on-board PHY.
> I suspect there will be some work required for NC-SI with the NICs Google
> will be using.

We've got a proposed NC-SI stack in our kernels we're using for
Barreleye and on a ast2500 based system. That's been worked on by
Gavin; he's keen to find someone who works in the Linux network stack
to provide meaningful review.

> Are you planning to stick with 4.7-rc1 as a base for AST2500 support?  I was
> expecting to start from a normal release such as 4.6.

We tend to keep moving forward so any work we do is relevant for
upstreaming. I have some basic aspeed support upstream in 4.7, and I
moved our drivers up so I could test this. As I didn't run in to any
trouble on the evb when testing we're running with 4.7.

I intend to continue cleaning up our drivers and submitting them
before the 4.8 merge window opens. Assistance on this front is
welcome.

> I'll ask one of my people to start looking into u-boot.  I know we need to
> do some work for Google-specific changes but we should also be able to help
> with getting the Aspeed changes cleaned up for upstream.

We've got two people working on that front. Teddy has been focusing on
the ast2400 and sent some mail to the u-boot list relating to that
today.

Cedric has been focusing on ast2500 support. He has that booting on
Qemu and will try that on hardware next week.

Finally, Brad has added a ast2500-evb board to our poky tree. Expect
to see patches for that on the list in the next day or two.

Cheers,

Joel

>
>
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 7:26 PM, Patrick Williams <patrick at stwcx.xyz> wrote:
>>
>> Rick,
>>
>> Joel has been working on the AST2500 support for the kernel. I believe
>> his current working tree is here:
>>     https://github.com/shenki/linux/tree/dev-4.7
>>
>> We are currently using the u-boot from the Aspeed SDK without much
>> (any?) change at all. I think this is his tree for that:
>>     https://github.com/shenki/u-boot/tree/v2013.01-aspeed-ast2500
>>
>> We are also in the process of creating the AST2500 BSP recipes to pull
>> this work all together. You should see some commits in the next few days
>> for this. In the worst case, it will be up by the end of next week.
>>
>> One area of need we have is taking the u-boot changes from Aspeed and
>> getting them cleaned up, applicable to upstream master, and sent
>> upstream. Joel and Teddy from Facebook have both done a little work in
>> this area, but I think both of them have been busy with other tasks.
>>
>> Have you looked at support for Zaius' NIC for the BMC? Some of the
>> systems use an NCSI shared interface and some have an independent PHY.
>> This has tended to be a "problematic" area for both u-boot and kernel.
>> If you're not using an already-supported interface there will be code
>> you need to write there. U-boot isn't required but is handy for netboot
>> in development.
>>
>> I don't have the roadmap ready for the userspace work we are planning to
>> do. There is a significant amount of work we have planned over the next
>> N months for a machine we are developing in a parallel time-frame with
>> Zaius. I am really striving to get this all out on Github so we can
>> coordinate this work with your team, but had some snags that I am
>> working out.
>>
>> I am going to be in town next Wed 6/8. We can discuss some more on the
>> userspace plans face-to-face. Hopefully, I can get our plans for the
>> next few months published in Github by the end of this month.
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 01, 2016 at 12:54:51PM -0700, Rick Altherr wrote:
>> > For Zaius, Google and Rackspace's Power9 server, we'll be including an
>> > AST2500 and plan to run OpenBMC.  I have a few people on my team
>> > available
>> > to contribute to AST2500 bringup and Zaius-specific OpenBMC development.
>> > I'm trying to figure out what all needs to be done, what AST2500 work is
>> > already being done, and where my team's contributions can best be
>> > utilized.
>> >
>> > I know Xo Wang (xow at google.com) has already been talking with some of
>> > you
>> > about the kernel work needed for AST2500.  What is needed in Yocto and
>> > the
>> > userspace apps?  I can easily put together a AST2500 bsp layer but
>> > without
>> > a corresponding kernel, that's not particularly useful.
>> >
>> > Is there a published roadmap somewhere?  Where do you see the biggest
>> > need
>> > for help?
>> >
>> > Rick
>>
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > openbmc mailing list
>> > openbmc at lists.ozlabs.org
>> > https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/openbmc
>>
>>
>> --
>> Patrick Williams
>
>
>
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