Adding support for Orange Pi Zero 3
I would like to contribute improvements u-boot to enable support for the Orange Pi Zero 3 board. I have already gained a good understanding of the project and the standards for changes, and so I have made modifications and tested them on my board.
Before submitting patches for review I've got a few questions I'd like to discuss.
The board is an Allwinner H618. From what I can gather this is just an H616 with minor changes. The changes are so minor that I've been able to implement the support as changes to the existing files for H616. For example, to add LPDDR4 support I have been able to make changes to arch/arm/mach-sunxi/dram_sun50i_h616.c and done so in a well configured way that won't impact anything else. Is doing it in this way acceptable or would the preference be to have a separate file (e.g. dram_sun50i_h618.c) to keep H616 and H618 separate? The way I've done it feels right because it really is just a minor upgrade, but there might be other opinions I should hear first.
Further, with regards to attribution, all of my changes are based on code in https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/u-boot-orangepi. I've not been able to cherry-pick changes because that codebase has departed severely from the u-boot master branch and it's not as elegantly maintained, so I've had to surgically move just the changes required to get my board working. Their repo is correctly marked as GPL-2.0 so compatible with merging, but the exact author of every line of code will be difficult to attribute. Is it sufficient for me to cite that downstream repo as the source of the patches?
Thanks in advance. I've not submitted a patch here before so I could benefit from some hand-holding to not create problems for people, but I'm pretty confident that the changes I've made comply with the standards of the project and that there won't be much of an issue having them accepted.
On Sat, 4 Nov 2023 19:17:44 +0000 electricworry worryelectric@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I would like to contribute improvements u-boot to enable support for the Orange Pi Zero 3 board. I have already gained a good understanding of the project and the standards for changes, and so I have made modifications and tested them on my board.
thanks for your interest and for reaching out!
I will answer your questions below, but for this particular topic there are already support patches on the list (sorry for the disappointment!): https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/20231114013106.31336-1-andre.przywara@arm.com...
Can you please apply those patches on top of mainline U-Boot and test them? Then reply to patch 3/3 above with a Tested-by: line, stating your name and email address? Having independent reports of that working would make me more confident in merging the series.
As a general advice: try to reach out early, to avoid working in parallel on something, and also to avoid working in the wrong direction. There is the #linux-sunxi IRC channel on the OFTC IRC network[1] (you can join via any browser), also there is a mailing list for Allwinner related upstream work: linux-sunxi@lists.linux.dev [2] Another resource is our wiki: https://linux-sunxi.org
[1] https://www.oftc.net/WebChat/ https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi [2] https://subspace.kernel.org/lists.linux.dev.html
Before submitting patches for review I've got a few questions I'd like to discuss.
The board is an Allwinner H618. From what I can gather this is just an H616 with minor changes. The changes are so minor that I've been able to implement the support as changes to the existing files for H616.
Just curious, what changes did you find in particular? So far we know about the increased L2 cache, which is irrelevant from a software support perspective, and the change of base address and layout of the CPUX_CFG block, which is already covered by: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/0a137ac5015933bf38ea2700abe706... Did you find anything else?
For example, to add LPDDR4 support I have been able to make changes to arch/arm/mach-sunxi/dram_sun50i_h616.c and done so in a well
Out of interest, how did you do this? Disassembled the vendor boot0? Dumping DRAM registers? We discussed and tested the LPDDR4 support already a while ago, and support for that was merged recently: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/4b02f0120a4bb2a5d7081aef8cef6a...
configured way that won't impact anything else. Is doing it in this way acceptable or would the preference be to have a separate file
In general we try to keep the code as much together as possible, especially when there is a high overlap, like in this case. So yeah, one file to drive all variants of DRAM for this SoC.
(e.g. dram_sun50i_h618.c) to keep H616 and H618 separate? The way I've
Please note that the DRAM controller in both chips is the same, it's just that the OrangePi boards using the H618 are the first easily available to use LPDDR4. Mikhail was in fact developing his patch on a custom board with LPDDR4 DRAM, using the Allwinner T507 (a repackaged H616).
done it feels right because it really is just a minor upgrade, but there might be other opinions I should hear first.
Further, with regards to attribution, all of my changes are based on code in https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/u-boot-orangepi. I've not been able to cherry-pick changes because that codebase has departed severely from the u-boot master branch and it's not as elegantly maintained, so I've had to surgically move just the changes required
I see you figured ;-)
to get my board working. Their repo is correctly marked as GPL-2.0 so compatible with merging, but the exact author of every line of code will be difficult to attribute. Is it sufficient for me to cite that downstream repo as the source of the patches?
Yes, if you (need to) make significant changes, it's common practice to make those your patches, and just mention the original work. At the end the original author apparently couldn't be bothered to upstream this. If possible, it's nice to try to reach the author, and ask for their intention on this: often they don't really care (anymore), so are happy if you do the upstreaming work.
Another way would be to take an original patch, adjust/rebase it, and send it on behalf of the original author, keeping their authorship (From:). This requires a Signed-off-by: line from the author, and *your* Signed-off-by: line added, to confirm that you obtained those patches legally and in compliance with the license.
Commonly this generates a series with a mixture of original patches, rewritten patches (you as the author), and slightly adjusted patches (them as the author).
Hope that helps!
Cheers, Andre
Thanks in advance. I've not submitted a patch here before so I could benefit from some hand-holding to not create problems for people, but I'm pretty confident that the changes I've made comply with the standards of the project and that there won't be much of an issue having them accepted.
On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 03:17:09PM +0000, Andre Przywara wrote:
On Sat, 4 Nov 2023 19:17:44 +0000 electricworry worryelectric@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I would like to contribute improvements u-boot to enable support for the Orange Pi Zero 3 board. I have already gained a good understanding of the project and the standards for changes, and so I have made modifications and tested them on my board.
thanks for your interest and for reaching out!
I will answer your questions below, but for this particular topic there are already support patches on the list (sorry for the disappointment!): https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/20231114013106.31336-1-andre.przywara@arm.com...
That's good. I'm happy that more experienced people have been working on this. It's been a good learning experience nevertheless.
Can you please apply those patches on top of mainline U-Boot and test them? Then reply to patch 3/3 above with a Tested-by: line, stating your name and email address? Having independent reports of that working would make me more confident in merging the series.
I'm happy to do that and will be able to do it shortly. In this case would I be applying the patches on top of the next branch?
As a general advice: try to reach out early, to avoid working in parallel on something, and also to avoid working in the wrong direction. There is the #linux-sunxi IRC channel on the OFTC IRC network[1] (you can join via any browser), also there is a mailing list for Allwinner related upstream work: linux-sunxi@lists.linux.dev [2] Another resource is our wiki: https://linux-sunxi.org
[1] https://www.oftc.net/WebChat/ https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi [2] https://subspace.kernel.org/lists.linux.dev.html
Thank you. I wasn't aware of this community and have been working alone. It will be more productive to work and discuss with others so I'll join that mailing list too.
Before submitting patches for review I've got a few questions I'd like to discuss.
The board is an Allwinner H618. From what I can gather this is just an H616 with minor changes. The changes are so minor that I've been able to implement the support as changes to the existing files for H616.
Just curious, what changes did you find in particular? So far we know about the increased L2 cache, which is irrelevant from a software support perspective, and the change of base address and layout of the CPUX_CFG block, which is already covered by: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/0a137ac5015933bf38ea2700abe706... Did you find anything else?
I am not what anyone could call a hardware expert so I've just been working by diffing the codebase from the vendor against u-boot mainline. Changes that I've created patches for include their full dtb, the LPDDR4 support, the AXP313A power, and - perhaps incorrectly - zeroing a register so that the thermal driver in the kernel works properly and doesn't get false high temperature readings. I say "perhaps incorrectly" because I feel like the kernel driver should be doing that work itself and the comment in the vendor u-boot code suggests it's a hack: "The bit[16] of register reg[0x03000000] must be zero for the THS driver to work properly in the kernel. The BSP u-boot is putting the whole register to zero so we are doing the same."
Out of interest, how did you do this? Disassembled the vendor boot0? Dumping DRAM registers? We discussed and tested the LPDDR4 support already a while ago, and support for that was merged recently: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/4b02f0120a4bb2a5d7081aef8cef6a...
As above, I didn't do anything clever like probe hardware or disassemble binaries; it was just a brute force loop of cherry-picking, compiling and testing. And also doing it in a way that fitted the incumbent style and practices of mainline. e.g. making use of configs like CONFIG_DRAM_SUN50I_H616_DX_ODT for the board family rathern than having board specific ifdefs. The work done is available if anyone wants to see it, and I'd be happy to have it critiqued. Looking at the patches proposed here I'm happy to see that we've come to the same conclusion on some things (such as the above config) and others we diverge on, but as I can see from the discussion in linux-sunxi the feeling is that some of these difference don't matter.
Hope that helps!
Cheers, Andre
Thanks for all of that good advice. It's immensely appreciated. I'll keep this as a guide for contibuting patches in the future.
Now that there's a working u-boot for the board - I've got two to choose from now :) - I'm going to be concentrating on trying to get the Mali graphics working as it's a requirement for my project. I've got a working kernel (6.1.31 with patches) but I can also see that work's been underway to bring the support to 6.7. I tested 6.7-rc2 today and can't get any output at all on the console after u-boot starts the kernel.
Cheers, Bob
On Sun, 26 Nov 2023 11:32:35 +0000 Bob McChesney bob@electricworry.net wrote:
Hi Bob,
thanks for the reply!
CC:ing Jernej for the THS SRAM issue and the HDMI support mentioned below.
On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 03:17:09PM +0000, Andre Przywara wrote:
On Sat, 4 Nov 2023 19:17:44 +0000 electricworry worryelectric@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I would like to contribute improvements u-boot to enable support for the Orange Pi Zero 3 board. I have already gained a good understanding of the project and the standards for changes, and so I have made modifications and tested them on my board.
thanks for your interest and for reaching out!
I will answer your questions below, but for this particular topic there are already support patches on the list (sorry for the disappointment!): https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/20231114013106.31336-1-andre.przywara@arm.com...
That's good. I'm happy that more experienced people have been working on this. It's been a good learning experience nevertheless.
Can you please apply those patches on top of mainline U-Boot and test them? Then reply to patch 3/3 above with a Tested-by: line, stating your name and email address? Having independent reports of that working would make me more confident in merging the series.
I'm happy to do that and will be able to do it shortly. In this case would I be applying the patches on top of the next branch?
The normal master branch would be safer. I don't typically work on the next branch, and there might be changes in there which subtly break sunxi.
As a general advice: try to reach out early, to avoid working in parallel on something, and also to avoid working in the wrong direction. There is the #linux-sunxi IRC channel on the OFTC IRC network[1] (you can join via any browser), also there is a mailing list for Allwinner related upstream work: linux-sunxi@lists.linux.dev [2] Another resource is our wiki: https://linux-sunxi.org
[1] https://www.oftc.net/WebChat/ https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi [2] https://subspace.kernel.org/lists.linux.dev.html
Thank you. I wasn't aware of this community and have been working alone. It will be more productive to work and discuss with others so I'll join that mailing list too.
Yeah, the IRC chat is the most responsive and most helpful, I find, so try to join that.
Before submitting patches for review I've got a few questions I'd like to discuss.
The board is an Allwinner H618. From what I can gather this is just an H616 with minor changes. The changes are so minor that I've been able to implement the support as changes to the existing files for H616.
Just curious, what changes did you find in particular? So far we know about the increased L2 cache, which is irrelevant from a software support perspective, and the change of base address and layout of the CPUX_CFG block, which is already covered by: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/0a137ac5015933bf38ea2700abe706... Did you find anything else?
I am not what anyone could call a hardware expert so I've just been working by diffing the codebase from the vendor against u-boot mainline.
Most of us are indeed curious software developers, and we typically do a mixture of looking at vendor code, checking manuals, and doing live experiments to figure things out.
Changes that I've created patches for include their full dtb, the LPDDR4 support, the AXP313A power, and - perhaps incorrectly - zeroing a register so that the thermal driver in the kernel works properly and doesn't get false high temperature readings.
Ah, glad I am not the only one seeing this! I strangely haven't seen this all the time, but I indeed now need to do a "mw.l 0x3000000 0x7ffeffff" in U-Boot, otherwise I see the kernel screaming about +200C temperatures.
I say "perhaps incorrectly" because I feel like the kernel driver should be doing that work itself and the comment in the vendor u-boot code suggests it's a hack: "The bit[16] of register reg[0x03000000] must be zero for the THS driver to work properly in the kernel. The BSP u-boot is putting the whole register to zero so we are doing the same."
Very good, you are exactly on the same path as I am! I have a patch for the THS driver that tries to clear the bit, via using the regmap exported by syscon, but I need to test this further (was my plan for today). I think this was somehow not working properly the last time I checked. Another approach was trying to claim an SRAM region - as this is what this register does for the video engine (VE). I figured that apparently just bit 0 switches the SRAM to the VE, and flipping all 31 bits might be some anachronism from the olden A10 days. So we might claim that bit 16 switches the SRAM for THS, but then I am not sure it really has something to do with SRAM, or if it's just another Allwinner special of "oh, we have an unused bit in this register" ;-) We will see what the list has to say about this.
Out of interest, how did you do this? Disassembled the vendor boot0? Dumping DRAM registers? We discussed and tested the LPDDR4 support already a while ago, and support for that was merged recently: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/4b02f0120a4bb2a5d7081aef8cef6a...
As above, I didn't do anything clever like probe hardware or disassemble binaries; it was just a brute force loop of cherry-picking, compiling and testing. And also doing it in a way that fitted the incumbent style and practices of mainline. e.g. making use of configs like CONFIG_DRAM_SUN50I_H616_DX_ODT for the board family rathern than having board specific ifdefs. The work done is available if anyone wants to see it, and I'd be happy to have it critiqued. Looking at the patches proposed here I'm happy to see that we've come to the same conclusion on some things (such as the above config) and others we diverge on, but as I can see from the discussion in linux-sunxi the feeling is that some of these difference don't matter.
Hope that helps!
Cheers, Andre
Thanks for all of that good advice. It's immensely appreciated. I'll keep this as a guide for contibuting patches in the future.
Now that there's a working u-boot for the board - I've got two to choose from now :) - I'm going to be concentrating on trying to get the Mali graphics working as it's a requirement for my project. I've got a working kernel (6.1.31 with patches) but I can also see that work's been underway to bring the support to 6.7. I tested 6.7-rc2 today and can't get any output at all on the console after u-boot starts the kernel.
Yeah, that's because we don't have any video (HDMI) output support (something completely unrelated to Mali, which is just a 3D renderer!) yet in mainline. Jernej was sitting on *some* patches for a while, but didn't have the time to upstream them, and IIUC there is something odd to fix first before it's mainline ready. There are some rough bits in here, and in other repos floating around: https://github.com/jernejsk/linux-1/commits/h616-hdmi-v2
Cheers, Andre
On Sun, Nov 26, 2023 at 12:33:51PM +0000, Andre Przywara wrote:
On Sun, 26 Nov 2023 11:32:35 +0000 Bob McChesney bob@electricworry.net wrote:
Hi Bob,
thanks for the reply!
Now that there's a working u-boot for the board - I've got two to choose from now :) - I'm going to be concentrating on trying to get the Mali graphics working as it's a requirement for my project. I've got a working kernel (6.1.31 with patches) but I can also see that work's been underway to bring the support to 6.7. I tested 6.7-rc2 today and can't get any output at all on the console after u-boot starts the kernel.
Yeah, that's because we don't have any video (HDMI) output support (something completely unrelated to Mali, which is just a 3D renderer!) yet in mainline. Jernej was sitting on *some* patches for a while, but didn't have the time to upstream them, and IIUC there is something odd to fix first before it's mainline ready. There are some rough bits in here, and in other repos floating around: https://github.com/jernejsk/linux-1/commits/h616-hdmi-v2
The lack of console output I referred to was over the serial port. I expected that when I swapped out my modified 6.1.31 kernel for 6.7-rc2 that I would still get serial output but nothing; the dtb in mainline looks pretty sparse compared to mine.
Cheers, Andre
Regards, Bob
Dne nedelja, 26. november 2023 ob 13:33:51 CET je Andre Przywara napisal(a):
On Sun, 26 Nov 2023 11:32:35 +0000 Bob McChesney bob@electricworry.net wrote:
Hi Bob,
thanks for the reply!
CC:ing Jernej for the THS SRAM issue and the HDMI support mentioned below.
On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 03:17:09PM +0000, Andre Przywara wrote:
On Sat, 4 Nov 2023 19:17:44 +0000 electricworry worryelectric@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I would like to contribute improvements u-boot to enable support for the Orange Pi Zero 3 board. I have already gained a good understanding of the project and the standards for changes, and so I have made modifications and tested them on my board.
thanks for your interest and for reaching out!
I will answer your questions below, but for this particular topic there are already support patches on the list (sorry for the disappointment!): https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/20231114013106.31336-1-andre.przywara@arm.com...
That's good. I'm happy that more experienced people have been working on this. It's been a good learning experience nevertheless.
Can you please apply those patches on top of mainline U-Boot and test them? Then reply to patch 3/3 above with a Tested-by: line, stating your name and email address? Having independent reports of that working would make me more confident in merging the series.
I'm happy to do that and will be able to do it shortly. In this case would I be applying the patches on top of the next branch?
The normal master branch would be safer. I don't typically work on the next branch, and there might be changes in there which subtly break sunxi.
As a general advice: try to reach out early, to avoid working in parallel on something, and also to avoid working in the wrong direction. There is the #linux-sunxi IRC channel on the OFTC IRC network[1] (you can join via any browser), also there is a mailing list for Allwinner related upstream work: linux-sunxi@lists.linux.dev [2] Another resource is our wiki: https://linux-sunxi.org
[1] https://www.oftc.net/WebChat/ https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi [2] https://subspace.kernel.org/lists.linux.dev.html
Thank you. I wasn't aware of this community and have been working alone. It will be more productive to work and discuss with others so I'll join that mailing list too.
Yeah, the IRC chat is the most responsive and most helpful, I find, so try to join that.
Before submitting patches for review I've got a few questions I'd like to discuss.
The board is an Allwinner H618. From what I can gather this is just an H616 with minor changes. The changes are so minor that I've been able to implement the support as changes to the existing files for H616.
Just curious, what changes did you find in particular? So far we know about the increased L2 cache, which is irrelevant from a software support perspective, and the change of base address and layout of the CPUX_CFG block, which is already covered by: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/0a137ac5015933bf38ea2700abe706... Did you find anything else?
I am not what anyone could call a hardware expert so I've just been working by diffing the codebase from the vendor against u-boot mainline.
Most of us are indeed curious software developers, and we typically do a mixture of looking at vendor code, checking manuals, and doing live experiments to figure things out.
Changes that I've created patches for include their full dtb, the LPDDR4 support, the AXP313A power, and - perhaps incorrectly - zeroing a register so that the thermal driver in the kernel works properly and doesn't get false high temperature readings.
Ah, glad I am not the only one seeing this! I strangely haven't seen this all the time, but I indeed now need to do a "mw.l 0x3000000 0x7ffeffff" in U-Boot, otherwise I see the kernel screaming about +200C temperatures.
I say "perhaps incorrectly" because I feel like the kernel driver should be doing that work itself and the comment in the vendor u-boot code suggests it's a hack: "The bit[16] of register reg[0x03000000] must be zero for the THS driver to work properly in the kernel. The BSP u-boot is putting the whole register to zero so we are doing the same."
Very good, you are exactly on the same path as I am! I have a patch for the THS driver that tries to clear the bit, via using the regmap exported by syscon, but I need to test this further (was my plan for today). I think this was somehow not working properly the last time I checked. Another approach was trying to claim an SRAM region - as this is what this register does for the video engine (VE). I figured that apparently just bit 0 switches the SRAM to the VE, and flipping all 31 bits might be some anachronism from the olden A10 days. So we might claim that bit 16 switches the SRAM for THS, but then I am not sure it really has something to do with SRAM, or if it's just another Allwinner special of "oh, we have an unused bit in this register" ;-) We will see what the list has to say about this.
Out of interest, how did you do this? Disassembled the vendor boot0? Dumping DRAM registers? We discussed and tested the LPDDR4 support already a while ago, and support for that was merged recently: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/u-boot/-/commit/4b02f0120a4bb2a5d7081aef8cef6a...
As above, I didn't do anything clever like probe hardware or disassemble binaries; it was just a brute force loop of cherry-picking, compiling and testing. And also doing it in a way that fitted the incumbent style and practices of mainline. e.g. making use of configs like CONFIG_DRAM_SUN50I_H616_DX_ODT for the board family rathern than having board specific ifdefs. The work done is available if anyone wants to see it, and I'd be happy to have it critiqued. Looking at the patches proposed here I'm happy to see that we've come to the same conclusion on some things (such as the above config) and others we diverge on, but as I can see from the discussion in linux-sunxi the feeling is that some of these difference don't matter.
Hope that helps!
Cheers, Andre
Thanks for all of that good advice. It's immensely appreciated. I'll keep this as a guide for contibuting patches in the future.
Now that there's a working u-boot for the board - I've got two to choose from now :) - I'm going to be concentrating on trying to get the Mali graphics working as it's a requirement for my project. I've got a working kernel (6.1.31 with patches) but I can also see that work's been underway to bring the support to 6.7. I tested 6.7-rc2 today and can't get any output at all on the console after u-boot starts the kernel.
Yeah, that's because we don't have any video (HDMI) output support (something completely unrelated to Mali, which is just a 3D renderer!) yet in mainline. Jernej was sitting on *some* patches for a while, but didn't have the time to upstream them, and IIUC there is something odd to fix first before it's mainline ready. There are some rough bits in here, and in other repos floating around: https://github.com/jernejsk/linux-1/commits/h616-hdmi-v2
That one is old. Most recent development is in https://github.com/jernejsk/linux-1/commits/h616-var
However, note that there is quite a lot of work to do before it could be mainlined.
Best regards, Jernej
participants (4)
-
Andre Przywara -
Bob McChesney -
electricworry -
Jernej Škrabec