Chances of platform upgrade? (Kernel + OpenWRT release)

[voltagex]

The Almond+ is currently stuck on an old 2.6 kernel release and a 2010 version of OpenWRT. What are the chances of an upgrade in the future to a recent kernel and distro? I understand this requires Cortina to provide updated board support also.

[cputoaster]

Also, it looks like the current kernel is armv7l = softfp, right? A9 with neon should allow hardfp for more performance, I think. Is there anything in the works there?

[aenertia]

The SoC has neon and vfp3

BusyBox v1.17.3 (2014-08-11 11:18:31 IST) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

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S E C U R I F I  Home Automation
root@AlmondPlus:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor       : ARMv7 Processor rev 1 (v7l)
processor       : 0
BogoMIPS        : 1497.49

processor       : 1
BogoMIPS        : 1497.49

Features        : swp half fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x2
CPU part        : 0xc09
CPU revision    : 1

Hardware        : CORTINA-G2 EB
Revision        : 7542a1
Serial          : 0000000000000000


https://www.cortina-systems.com/pcns/download/203/996/61


I am not an ARM arch expert, but apart from power savings I am not sure how if any going to a more recent arm revision would help performance wise.

[aenertia]

Main sticking point is going to be wether or not Cortina and Qualcom/atheros are willing to open up and release non NDA GPL or LGPL compliant source for the chip. Having the various required patches in mainline kernel tree and wireless-next will determine a lot of what can be done with the A+. Hardware wise it's awesome; even with a crapload of scheduling and CPU bound packet processing in theory it should be able to do multi-gigabit rate operations without much of a sweat in comparison to the now 14 year old MIP's CPU's in most Home routers.

Again is going to come down to what secrifi can wrangle out of Cortina (which as I read it is in the middle of a takeover by some company called Inphi )

[voltagex]

http://investors.inphi.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=237726&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1952817&highlight=

The acquisition does not include Cortina's Access and Digital Home business, which is currently scheduled to be divested prior to the acquisition close and will continue as an independent company.

[voltagex]

It looks like the Buffalo VR S1000 also uses this chipset.

Can anyone translate?

http://bbs.kakaku.com/bbs/-/SortID=16985115/?Reload=%8C%9F%8D%F5&SearchWord=linux#tab

[LGNilsson]

Talked to Cortina today, you'll have access to everything except their proprietary packet engine as far as i understood things. We'll be adding whatever bits are currently missing from the SDK, that we were given by Cortina today.

Sorry, but I'm not a programmer so my terminology in this case limited 

And yes, Buffalo is using the same chipset.

[aenertia]

Great! Most of the vendor routing stacks are aimed at doing hardware nat accel and often are buggy and not needed once you start to be able to work with the platform properly with a modern mainline stack.

Certainly that has been my experience with the ar71xx routers (tplink, netgear, asus, 2wire) they all have vendor supplied bits for 'hardware' accel nat etc - which in reality can be done just as well in software, and that's on MIPS!. They seem to think they are 'adding' value by doing this - mostly they are just introducing bugs and not fixing things whilst creating an unmaintainable esoteric fork that even internally they are hard pressed to work with.

[voltagex]

I'm pretty concerned about the age of the kernel, but maybe we can work with the OpenWRT people on that.

[LGNilsson]

Well, it is what is is right now, but Cortina is working on a 3.4.x kernel release and we'll be moving to that once we deem it stable, since as of right now there are a few issues that we're waiting for them to fix as far as I'm aware.
Most routers are still on 2.6.x so this isn't something out of the ordinary.

The offload engine is a bit different in this case, as we'll be using it for offloading the 802.11ac Wi-Fi from the main SoC cores and Buffalo is using it to accelerate the VPN in the product mentioned above. It's not a NAT accelerator.

[voltagex]

Hey Lars,
Would you mind asking Cortina to post the 3.4.x kernel source as well as the 2.6 source?

Thanks again

[voltagex]

Had a chance to have a look a the internals. I'm sorry for asking for so much, but we will also need source or information on the u-boot bootloader - it's an extremely old 2009 version and will pose problems booting newer kernels.

[syxbit]

you mentioned that Cortina was looking at upgrading to kernel 3.4 10 months ago. Any update on this?

[TheLostSwede]

I'm afraid I left the company at the end of April, so I don't have any involvement with this any more.
Note that Cortina was bought by Realtek and I honestly don't know what happened after that.

[revoman]

I'm interested in an update on this thread.  Any chance of getting an update to OpenWRT.