Enclosed please find the link to the Weekly Status report for the kernel working group for the week ending 2011-08-26.
== Meeting Minutes == https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Meetings/2011-08-22
== Weekly Status Report == https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Status/2011-08-25
== Summary == * Released 11.08 Linaro kernel based on 3.0.3 stable kernel including the merge of 3.1-rc1 core ARM updates from Russell King's tree. * Merged 11.08 Linaro kernel into Linaro+Android tree * Initial support of Origen board and support of BeagleBoardhttps://wiki.linaro.org/BeagleBoard-xM revision C. * Integrated patch set for Qualcomm Hexagon architecture * The v6/v7 single kernel patches are now accepted by Russell; these should allow linaro filesystems to work on omap2plus_defconfig kernels * Started DT support for i.mx6Q * vexpress DT got a booting kernel (with some hacks) platform devices are now populated from the device tree * MX53 NAND driver support * The USB mass storage patch for variable number of pipeline buffers is queued for 3.2. * Fault injection for MMC is queued for 3.2
On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 09:07:44AM -0500, Mounir Bsaibes wrote:
- Integrated patch set for Qualcomm Hexagon architecture
Interesting. What exactly is this?
- The v6/v7 single kernel patches are now accepted by Russell; these should
allow linaro filesystems to work on omap2plus_defconfig kernels
Can you reword this? I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what happened or what the outcome was here.
On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Christian Robottom Reis kiko@linaro.org wrote:
On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 09:07:44AM -0500, Mounir Bsaibes wrote:
* Integrated patch set for Qualcomm Hexagon architecture
Interesting. What exactly is this?
* The v6/v7 single kernel patches are now accepted by Russell; these should allow linaro filesystems to work on omap2plus_defconfig kernels
Can you reword this? I'm having a hard time understanding exactly what happened or what the outcome was here.
Previously, if you built a single kernel supporting v6 and v7 platforms, then some Thumb instructions (particular VFP/NEON) could cause programs to die with an Illegal Instruction signal. This hits all linaro filesystems, since they are built in Thumb-2 with VFP -- just booting would spray SIGILLs all over the console.
The patches allow appropriate handling of those instructions based on the CPU the kernel is actually running on, instead of it being hard-wired based on the minimum architecture the kernel was built for. That allows some standard reference configurations used by upsteam (e.g. omap2plus_defconfig) to be used with linaro filesystems. It removes one obstacle to building a single kernel image across whole SoC families, which should be of interest to SoC vendors. It's also useful for kernel developers: kernel changes can be better tested against upsteam, while still using the linaro filesystems.
Does that answer the question?
Cheers ---Dave
-
Christian Robottom Reis -
Dave Martin -
Mounir Bsaibes