Re: ARM 64?

Hey,

On Thu, 2018-05-24 at 21:02 +1000, Mathew McBride wrote:

Hi Michael,

See answers below

On 24/5/18, 8:31 pm, "Michael Tremer" michael.tremer@ipfire.org wrote:

Hello,

On Thu, 2018-05-24 at 11:32 +1000, Mathew McBride wrote:
> Hi Michael,
> From the software side, the support in the kernel is fairly good,

mainline > 4.15 and later works. We (Traverse) only maintain a patchset for some small > drivers (such as hwmon sensors not yet in the kernel - not required to boot) > and other minor fixes not yet applied upstream.

Any idea if 4.14 works? We are going to use this kernel as the next one

because it is a long-term supported one.

4.14 does work, but the network drivers for the LS1043 narrowly missed the 4.14 merge window. They just need to be cherry-picked from a later kernel, i.e https://gitlab.com/traversetech/traverse-kernel-patches/blob/kernel-4- 14/patches/0001_soc-fsl-qbman-Enable-QBMan-on-ARM-Platforms.patch

Okay, that would be a better start for us to have all architectures on the same kernel.

IPFire is not based on any other distribution like Ubuntu is (was?) based on Debian. So we have to port the entire userspace as well as the kernel. Our kernel is also highly customised because the needs of a firewall and secure and hardened systems vary a lot from other server systems.

We also put a huge emphasis on performance. Networks need to be fast.

There isn't too much great build hardware out there for us right now. We have some smaller system that I can use to play around a bit for a start in a data center. The Mustang system I have doesn't run too well because there is a huge hardware bug in the SATA controller.

> If you build an image that uses UEFI boot it will work on both our

hardware > (bare metal), as a VM and on the ARM64 server platforms (Ampere/XGene, > Centriq, ThunderX), or even our competitors (MacchiatoBin etc.)

I got an XGene. Not really a fan of that EFI thing it came with, but u-

boot was in a horrible state a few years ago, too.

  https://planet.ipfire.org/post/our-start-with-arm64-the-applied-micro-mu

stang

> The big difference is that we use u-boot and it's EFI implementation -

and > that is improving at a rate that we don't feel it necessary to port TianoCore > to our board.

Haven't tried u-boot in EFI mode, yet. But it is a good to have everything

open and freely distributable for us. I suppose u-boot is living in the NAND flash and the OS is on SSD or SD card? Yes, u-boot is on the NAND. It will boot EFI distributions on any supported block device (SD, USB, SSD). There are some limitations - no EFI persistent variables etc. (yet) or RTC service, but I think that will eventually be solved.

In this hardware or in a future one?

'Real' ARM servers (these days) also use ACPI instead of passing a device tree, but this doesn't really make much of a difference in user space.

Not to userspace but to our kernel.

We don't support EFI yet on x86 because there was never any demand for it. Servers are still happy with the legacy mode and people don't seem to trust the bigger EFI blobs that are running on modern systems.

I suppose this hardware comes without a management engine and all of that stuff?

Best, -Michael

> The board Guy linked (LS1043-S) is our OEM/volume product, and he can

brief > you on the pricing off-list.

Thanks for that.

[snip] Regards, Matt > > -------- Forwarded Message -------- > Subject: > Re: ARM 64? > Date: > Wed, 23 May 2018 10:58:00 +0100 > From: > Michael Tremer mailto:michael.tremer@ipfire.org > To: > mailto:guy@traverse.com.au, mailto:development@lists.ipfire.org > > Hello Guy, > > thank you very much for getting in touch. > > Yes, we are working on an ARM 64 port, but so far we have not seen any > hardware > that was worth doing the port for. All those small and cheap single- board > computers lack power, the bigger systems are basically unavailable and way too > expensive. > > This board is way different though. CPU, Memory and especially the NICs are > something that are way better sized and make a nice small appliance for bigger > SOHOs or small to medium-sized offices. > > Not entirely sure why there is only one 10G port. Usually where 10G goes in, > it > has to go out somewhere else again... > > The big question is what software support is like in the Linux kernel for > this. > I have seen the patches linked on the product page and can only defer to Arne > to > have a look at it. > > My question would now be: What is the desired RRP for this or wholesale? I am > just curious to find out if it is competitive or if people would find it too > expensive and buy Intel again. Then we shouldn't really bother with putting > the > time into a port. If you are not comfortable sharing prices on the list, > please > feel free to email me in private about this. > > About the sponsorship. Thank you very much for considering us. I would be > happy > to have a closer look. Would you be able to ship this into the UK or Germany? > > Best, > -Michael > > On Wed, 2018-05-23 at 12:46 +1000, Guy Ellis wrote: > > Dear list, > > > > Just wondering if there is any interest in supporting ARM 64 hardware > > moving forward? > > > > We can assist with donated hardware and support if there is interest. > > https://traverse.com.au/products/ls1043s-router-board/ > > > > Regards, > > - Guy. > > > > > > >