[U-Boot] A little introduction

[Henrik Nordström]

ons 2012-09-12 klockan 11:26 +1000 skrev Graeme Russ:

> I must make an apology - I had committed to assisting you and Tom in
> bringing this port into mainline U-Boot (including investigating the
> SPL breakage et. al.).

No need to apology. We all have life (to various degrees) outside
computers.

AW A1X SPL seems to be under control. And currently massaging support
for the two CPUs (AW A10 and A13) into a shared (and fully up to date)
tree. The two CPUs are mostly the same for u-boot with only some tiny
differences in DRAM and clocking.

> That's great news. When you say 'little brother', does that imply that
> the A13 is a lower-powered/featured device when compared against the
> A10?

A13 is a very stripped down device compared to A10, aimed solely at dirt
cheap 7" tablets where A10 is a general multi-purpose flexible beast.

> Good to hear that there are individuals committed to supporting this
> hardware. My perception is that we are seeing explosive growth in the
> 'cheap but feature-full' ARM SoC market. But the consequence of the
> amount of competition in the market is that vendor margins are
> dropping and, as a consequence, vendors are devoting very little time
> to support us. I just wish they would at least produce datasheets that
> were more than an over-rated product brochure ;)

There is a restricted circulation AW A10 datasheet which is not the
product brochure, but the Linux kernel sources is the authorative source
of information in any interesting areas.

Regards
Henrik