On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 8:47 AM, Jean-Luc Aufranc <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I'm not sure if this is the kind of question you would consider, but I once > asked them a few questions about AllWinner and Linaro, and they acknowledge > my message, saying they will reply later. (That was about 6 weeks ago...). > Here's the list: > > * Why did AllWinner decide to join Linaro, and especially the Digital Home > Group?
I know this one. They joined at the cheapest level possible. And they thought that Digital Home would bring them somebody like Comcast as a customer. > > * There are three levels of membership for companies at Linaro: Core member, > Club member, and Group member. AllWinner joined Linaro as a Group member, > which as I understand is a limited membership, and leads to several > questions: > > 1. Will AllWinner primarily have an observatory role in the Digital Home > Group, or will the company be actively engaged? > 2. Will the work done in the Digital Home Group focus mainly on higher level > applications, or will some work be done on the kernel and drivers as well, > specifically to the parts relating to AllWinner, or in other words will > there be engineers at Linaro working on code specific to AllWinner? > > * I understand there's no AllWinner Landing Team at Linaro, so there won't > be engineering builds targeting AllWinner hardware released by Linaro. Does > AllWinner plan to eventually put more resources into Linaro? That's the key question. Will they commit money and people to Linaro? It not it is just pointless window dressing. > > * Do you expect the Linaro membership to affect the way the company > approaches open source development? For example, like many silicon vendors, > AllWinner develop their own SDK (Linux,U-boot, etc..) in house, and release > a vendor tree to direct customers, but it appears many companies are seeing > the benefit of committing code to mainline (kernel.org), and there's a clear > trend in that direction. Now AllWinner mainline support is mainly performed > by linux-sunxi community, so I'm wondering if AllWinner has any interest in > getting involved in this area? > > On 08/04/2014 06:14 AM, Simos Xenitellis wrote: > > Hi All, > > Nicolas (from ARMDevices.net) has conducted quite a few interviews with > Chinese hardware companies around Shenzhen. > There are several videos with Allwinner, such as > http://armdevices.net/2014/07/23/allwinner-64bit-armv8-processor-announced/ > > I think it would be a good opportunity to interview Allwinner about issues > with source code development. At > https://plus.google.com/u/0/+charbax/posts/6uqUutxjQiw (see comments) he is > OK to either mail Allwinner or arrange to visit them for a video interview. > My preference would be an interview on camera and I believe it should be > feasible. > There may not be immediate results out of this, however it would be great to > have some official response. > > What's needed is to describe to Nicolas what questions to ask. > I am not familiar with all important questions that can be asked so it would > be good to help add to the list, and explain to Nicolas so that he can > discuss them at ease. > > Here is my attempt with a question. Feel free to correct me. > > 1. The Linux kernel holds now the hardware description of SoCs in a data > format called Device Tree (DT). There are more details about DT at > http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/petazzoni-device-tree-dummies.pdf > For example, here is the DT file for the Rockchip 3188, > https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/arm/boot/dts/rk3188.dtsi > > While many manufacturers have provided DT files for their products, there > are none yet from Allwinner. > Here we can ask for Allwinner to provide them for all SoCs, or we can ask > specific details that will help to produce those files. Do we have a > preference? > > 2. Source code in mainline Linux. We explain why it is important, etc. > > There is a list of items (mainly drivers) at > http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort > Are these drivers without any released source code? Has the source code been > released but it needs lots of work to add to mainline? What should we ask > Allwinner to do? > > 3. There is the separate issue with the GPU drivers which I think is beyond > what Allwinner could do. > > There is part of the driver that comes with the Linux kernel and allows > hardware acceleration within Android. That facility is used with Mir and > Wayland to get hardware acceleration. > Is there anything that needs to be asked about Mali and PowerVR Linux kernel > drivers? > > Simos > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "linux-sunxi" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "linux-sunxi" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Jon Smirl [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "linux-sunxi" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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