Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 28 Jul 2013 13:23:22 +0200
From:      Willem Jan Withagen <wjw@digiware.nl>
To:        Alexander Motin <mav@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Dieter BSD <dieterbsd@gmail.com>, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Subject:   Getting documentation. ( Was Re: Reset Problem with SATA Port Multiplier)
Message-ID:  <51F4FF2A.2000500@digiware.nl>
In-Reply-To: <51F4F12F.80003@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <CAA3ZYrBWuztq9z0AddeJP0dnod40yAe%2BVQSZBwO330AKazf3eg@mail.gmail.com> <51F4F12F.80003@FreeBSD.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 28-7-2013 12:23, Alexander Motin wrote:
> Just recently I've made one more
> attempt to get some documentation on SATA controllers from Marvell. But
> even after signing NDA process again stopped since I am neither buying
> thousands of their chips as vendor nor they are supporting for
> end-users. The alike situation is with other vendors.

I heard from several board design houses and distributors that Marvell 
is among the hardest to get the stuff from. So your story is not unlike 
other stories I've heard.

In our previous company we needed support from a rather big chip vendor 
as well... (Philips NXP) which sort of worked while they were still in 
Eindhoven. But once this division got sold, things got a lost worse.

And in the end we had to got thru the designer/manufacturer of our 
boards, and a second tier distributor. And again everything under the 
original NDA.

Perhaps this is somethings you could also do for this problem. Find a 
coorperative PM board manufacturer, and bigback on their support with 
the promise to "support" their PM boards in FreeBSD.

Motivation for them would have to be that there could be a sales 
advantage in selling PM boards to FreeBSDers. And given that we 
advertise that ZFS does not need complex/expensive  RAID controllers 
will increase the usage of more simple devices.

Otehr way about it would be to involve the FreeBSD foundation, and get 
them to do the legal part of the stuff as a umbrella for the developers, 
and then delegate (again under NDA) work to developers that want to work 
on Marvell stuff.

--WjW





Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?51F4FF2A.2000500>