Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:06:02 +0100 From: Rafal Jaworowski <raj@semihalf.com> To: Daan Vreeken <Daan@vehosting.nl> Cc: FreeBSD-Embedded@FreeBSD.org, FreeBSD-PPC@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: PowerPC embedded board? Message-ID: <49747ABA.9090606@semihalf.com> In-Reply-To: <200901191259.50518.Daan@vehosting.nl> References: <200901191259.50518.Daan@vehosting.nl>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Daan Vreeken wrote: > For a new product I am looking for an embedded powerpc board. For the project > we need the following : > o A board that can (in the near future) boot FreeBSD. > o Support for hardware floating point arithmetic. > o The board should have some form of bus / IO to connect custom-made > peripheral(s) to. Other than what you alrady pointed out, what is the overall profile of this deployment i.e. what level of horse power do you need, networking throughput etc.? > Searching the internet I've already stumbled upon the Efika [1] and SAM440 [2] > boards, which both look promising, but as far as my Google-skills go, it > looks like both boards need more work to get FreeBSD fully functional on > them. > I'm thinking of buying a couple of boards and helping an interested developer > by either setting up a compile & test environment that is accessible over > ssh, or donating an entire board (or both :) Both MPC5200 (Efika) and PPC440 (SAM440 and others) require quite a bit of work to turn into a reliable system to be used in a commercial product. They are both at a very similar stage: the kernel initially boots, interrupt controller driver ready, console (UART), work is in progress towards getting user-space pieces together, getting single user shell etc. In both cases virtually all remaining on-chip peripherals need respective drivers newly developed. > So I've got some questions : > o Are there more interresting boards I could/should consider? (Or even boards > that can already run FreeBSD?) > o What board is most likely to grow FreeBSD support in the near future? > o What parts are currently missing to get these boards up and running? Ready to use and stable is the port for higher-end PowerPC systems: PowerQUICC MPC85xx series based on the E500 (BookE) core. You'll find all integrated peripherals supported, although the default environment with regards to the floating point support is running with emulation and not native hard-floats (due to various implemetations of the FPU, or the lack of). Rafal
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?49747ABA.9090606>