Interview questions to Allwinner

[Simos Xenitellis]

Hi All,

Nicolas (from ARMDevices.net) has conducted quite a few interviews with Chinese hardware companies around Shenzhen. 

There are several videos with Allwinner, such as http://armdevices.net/2014/07/23/allwinner-64bit-armv8-processor-announced/

I think it would be a good opportunity to interview Allwinner about issues with source code development. At https://plus.google.com/u/0/+charbax/posts/6uqUutxjQiw (see comments) he is OK to either mail Allwinner or arrange to visit them for a video interview. 

My preference would be an interview on camera and I believe it should be feasible.

There may not be immediate results out of this, however it would be great to have some official response.

What's needed is to describe to Nicolas what questions to ask.

I am not familiar with all important questions that can be asked so it would be good to help add to the list, and explain to Nicolas so that he can discuss them at ease.

Here is my attempt with a question. Feel free to correct me.

1. The Linux kernel holds now the hardware description of SoCs in a data format called Device Tree (DT). There are more details about DT at http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/petazzoni-device-tree-dummies.pdf

For example, here is the DT file for the Rockchip 3188,

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/arm/boot/dts/rk3188.dtsi

While many manufacturers have provided DT files for their products, there are none yet from Allwinner.

Here we can ask for Allwinner to provide them for all SoCs, or we can ask specific details that will help to produce those files. Do we have a preference?

2. Source code in mainline Linux. We explain why it is important, etc.

There is a list of items (mainly drivers) at http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort

Are these drivers without any released source code? Has the source code been released but it needs lots of work to add to mainline? What should we ask Allwinner to do?

3. There is the separate issue with the GPU drivers which I think is beyond what Allwinner could do.

There is part of the driver that comes with the Linux kernel and allows hardware acceleration within Android. That facility is used with Mir and Wayland to get hardware acceleration.

Is there anything that needs to be asked about Mali and PowerVR Linux kernel drivers?

Simos

[jons...@gmail.com]

1) Can Allwinner create a public git server containing all of their
released code and documentation tagged with version numbers? Please
make sure everything needed to do the build is provided.
2) When will Allwinner start contributing code directly to the
mainline kernel? Right now others are doing this work for you.
3) When will Allwinner support the mainline kernel Device Tree feature?
4) Can Allwinner provide us with a direct documentation contact that
is able to correct errors in the manual and supply various bits that
are missing? Put the version numbered manuals up in the public git
server.
5) Can Allwinner provide source for all GPL device drivers under their
control. For example some are missing like the NAND controller.
6) Would Allwinner consider releasing the source code for the user
space encode/decode libraries? There are many different user space
environments (various libc, endian, etc). Without the ability to
recompile these libraries the encode/decode hardware can't be used in
those environments. Having the source also allow bugs to be fixed.
7) Mali source is not under your control, please help pressure ARM,
Inc to release.
8) What are Allwinner's plans for Linaro? Are Linaro builds for
Allwinner CPUs going to happen?
9) Can Allwinner increase it's participation in the sunxi group? Sunxi
is doing a lot of work to help out Allwinner. How about a dedicated
Allwinner contact person who would be responsible for helping sunxi
secure documentation and source code releases?


--
Jon Smirl
jons...@gmail.com

[Maxime Ripard]

The only thing we need to write those are a good technical
documentation and board schematics. Allwinner is only really involved
in the former.

> 2. Source code in mainline Linux. We explain why it is important, etc.
>
> There is a list of items (mainly drivers) at
> http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort
> Are these drivers without any released source code? Has the source code
> been released but it needs lots of work to add to mainline? What should we
> ask Allwinner to do?

I'm not sure to get what you mean, but the drivers that got merged
were either:
- rewritten from scratch (GPIO, clocks, SPI, etc.)
- an adaptation to the Allwinner SoCs of already existing drivers
(GMAC, I2C, SATA, USB, etc.)
- Allwinner source code cleaned up (EMAC, MMC, etc.)

As for the things Allwinner should do, they should move to using
standard Linux API. They improved a lot that aspect when developping
the A23 BSP, and hopefully will continue to do so.

Maxime

--
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Simos Xenitellis]

For the A20, there is this document for EVB schematics, https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/blob/master/HARDWARE/A20-PDFs/A20_PAD_STD_V1_1.rar?raw=true

and http://dl.linux-sunxi.org/A20/A20%20User%20Manual%202013-03-22.pdf for technical documentation.

Are these what you are referring to?

If we want to make a proper question/request, we need a table with the SoCs and what's missing for each one of them.

Can someone make such a table?

> 2. Source code in mainline Linux. We explain why it is important, etc.
>
> There is a list of items (mainly drivers) at
> http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort
> Are these drivers without any released source code? Has the source code
> been released but it needs lots of work to add to mainline? What should we
> ask Allwinner to do?

I'm not sure to get what you mean, but the drivers that got merged
were either:
  - rewritten from scratch (GPIO, clocks, SPI, etc.)
  - an adaptation to the Allwinner SoCs of already existing drivers
    (GMAC, I2C, SATA, USB, etc.)
  - Allwinner source code cleaned up (EMAC, MMC, etc.)

This is very specific and useful. 

 

As for the things Allwinner should do, they should move to using
standard Linux API. They improved a lot that aspect when developping
the A23 BSP, and hopefully will continue to do so.

With Linux API you mean that Allwinner should use much as possible from what is offered at

https://www.kernel.org/doc/htmldocs/kernel-api/

like the available data manipulation functions rather than re-implementing them?

Can you give some specific examples and perhaps somewhat quantify the extent of the issue?

What went well with the A23 BSP?

Simos

[Chen-Yu Tsai]

You can find what docs we have by looking through the wiki.
For instance, we are missing user manuals for A10s and A31.

And the manuals we do have, have typos and/or are missing stuff for
vital hardware components, such as USB OTG, GMAC. Not to mention
undocumented registers for various stuff.

Last, most of the manual is just register dumps. There is little
information regarding the actual operation of the hardware.

Older kernels by Allwinner were based on 3.0 or 3.3, with a whole bunch
of Allwinner created APIs. With the A23 BSP, they moved to 3.4, and backported
a lot of new frameworks from 3.8+, such as pinctrl, common clk framework,
dmaengine, ASoC. They even used Maxime's pinctrl driver as a base.

Basing their code on newer kernel versions and common APIs makes them
easier to understand, clean up and port to mainline.


Cheers
ChenYu

[Simos Xenitellis]

Thanks all for the replies!

I composed the document for Nicolas and I hope he manages to arrange for a video interview.

The two main aspects were that what Allwinner currently provides (to the developer communities) is not sufficient,

and that what is needed is a direct contact from Allwinner to the linux-sunxi community 

in order to sort out issues as they develop.

The fact that Allwinner has been sending the OptimusBoard for testing as a server,

http://www.mininodes.com/allwinner-a80-optimus-board-arrives-for-testing/

shows that they need to open up and provide support so that any server distribution would work well.

The OptimusBoard with Android is not very useful for a server, and Linux 3.4 that currently runs on the A80 is not useful for a server either.

The videos that Nicolas has posted on ARMDevices.net show that there might be a cultural/language barrier with the potential contact.

I hope there is a response and we continue from there.

Simos

[保定芯灵思电子科技有限公司]

Simos：

    Allwinner themselves are not open, only the A80 information to their internal interest group.‍

   I once said to them, I want to do A80, but they refused.‍

We will soon get their information from other sources, and if we had, we will provide to the community‍

                                                  Sinlinx  CEO  Alexlee

  

------------------

Sinlinx Electronics Technology Co., LTD

保定芯灵思电子科技有限公司

官网网站：www.sinlinx.com

淘宝网址：sinlinx.taobao.com

 

 

 

------------------ 原始邮件 ------------------

发件人: "simos.lists";<simos...@googlemail.com>;

发送时间: 2014年8月6日(星期三) 下午5:43

收件人: "Chen-Yu Tsai"<we...@csie.org>;

抄送: "linux-sunxi"<linux...@googlegroups.com>; "maxime.ripard"<maxime...@free-electrons.com>;

主题: Re: [linux-sunxi] Interview questions to Allwinner

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[maxime.ripard]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2014 at 12:43:50PM +0300, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> Thanks all for the replies!
>
> I composed the document for Nicolas and I hope he manages to arrange for a
> video interview.
> The two main aspects were that what Allwinner currently provides (to the
> developer communities) is not sufficient,
> and that what is needed is a direct contact from Allwinner to the
> linux-sunxi community
> in order to sort out issues as they develop.

I'm a bit concerned about this to be honest.

No other SoC vendor will give you that sort of thing for free.
And no other SoC vendor will either send dev boards to any random dude
on the internet.

I don't think you could show up and just require that.

Allwinner has already been talking to us, and sent boards to a few
developpers, and we should already be grateful for that.

I agree on the fact that we'd need a better communication channel with
them though.

[jons...@gmail.com]

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 8:00 AM, maxime.ripard <maxime...@free-electrons.com> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 06, 2014 at 12:43:50PM +0300, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> Thanks all for the replies!
>
> I composed the document for Nicolas and I hope he manages to arrange for a
> video interview.
> The two main aspects were that what Allwinner currently provides (to the
> developer communities) is not sufficient,
> and that what is needed is a direct contact from Allwinner to the
> linux-sunxi community
> in order to sort out issues as they develop.

I'm a bit concerned about this to be honest.

No other SoC vendor will give you that sort of thing for free.
And no other SoC vendor will either send dev boards to any random dude
on the internet.

I don't think you could show up and just require that.

Allwinner has already been talking to us, and sent boards to a few
developpers, and we should already be grateful for that.

I agree on the fact that we'd need a better communication channel with
them though.

If their user manuals and datasheets contained the same info that is in the ones from TI or Freescale, that would eliminate 90% of the things I want to ask them.

For example, right now I need to know the maximum clock frequency allowed on the I2S_MCLK output pin and it is not spec'd in the datasheet.

I suspect they could eliminate 50% of their support burden by doing two things:

1) Full documentation in the manuals/datasheets

2) Put the SDKs up on a public server so that people can be sure they are using the most recent ones.

And then make a formal support system so that they can track what questions keep getting asked over and over again so that they can put the answer to those questions in a FAQ on the doc server.

 

Maxime

--
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons
Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

--
Jon Smirl
jons...@gmail.com

[jons...@gmail.com]

Allwinner is also very vulnerable to Android security bugs. In their
chaotic software distribution scheme there is absolutely no system for
updating people's machines. One bad bug that exposes everyone Android
tablets could sink their entire company due to reputation damage.

It should be possible for Allwinner to build a central server that
would send out Android updates as various patches are issued. But
doing that requires some cooperation with the various OEMs who add
random hardware. Getting everything onto the mainline kernel would
minimize that problem.

So this is a good question, if a critical Android security bug is
found how are you going to patch everyone's tablets? If they say it is
the OEM's problem point out that this is beyond the OEM's capabilities
and the patches aren't going to get applied. Long term this inability
to patch is going to destroy trust in Allwinner based devices.



--
Jon Smirl
jons...@gmail.com

[Jean-Luc Aufranc]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the kind of question you would consider, but I once asked them a few questions about AllWinner and Linaro, and they acknowledge my message, saying they will reply later. (That was about 6 weeks ago...). Here's the list:

* Why did AllWinner decide to join Linaro, and especially the Digital Home Group?

* There are three levels of membership for companies at Linaro: Core member, Club member, and Group member. AllWinner joined Linaro as a Group member, which as I understand is a limited membership, and leads to several questions:

1. Will AllWinner primarily have an observatory role in the Digital Home Group, or will the company be actively engaged?
2. Will the work done in the Digital Home Group focus mainly on higher level applications, or will some work be done on the kernel and drivers as well,  specifically to the parts relating to AllWinner, or in other words will there be engineers at Linaro working on code specific to AllWinner?

* I understand there's no AllWinner Landing Team at Linaro, so there won't be engineering builds targeting AllWinner hardware released by Linaro. Does AllWinner plan to eventually put more resources into Linaro?

* Do you expect the Linaro membership to affect the way the company approaches open source development? For example,  like many silicon vendors, AllWinner develop their own SDK (Linux,U-boot, etc..) in house, and release a vendor tree to direct customers, but it appears many companies are seeing the benefit of committing code to mainline (kernel.org), and there's a clear trend in that direction. Now AllWinner mainline support is mainly performed by linux-sunxi community, so I'm wondering if AllWinner has any interest in getting involved in this area?

[jons...@gmail.com]

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 8:47 AM, Jean-Luc Aufranc
<cnx...@cnx-software.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm not sure if this is the kind of question you would consider, but I once
> asked them a few questions about AllWinner and Linaro, and they acknowledge
> my message, saying they will reply later. (That was about 6 weeks ago...).
> Here's the list:
>
> * Why did AllWinner decide to join Linaro, and especially the Digital Home
> Group?

I know this one. They joined at the cheapest level possible. And they
thought that Digital Home would bring them somebody like Comcast as a
customer.

>
> * There are three levels of membership for companies at Linaro: Core member,
> Club member, and Group member. AllWinner joined Linaro as a Group member,
> which as I understand is a limited membership, and leads to several
> questions:
>
> 1. Will AllWinner primarily have an observatory role in the Digital Home
> Group, or will the company be actively engaged?
> 2. Will the work done in the Digital Home Group focus mainly on higher level
> applications, or will some work be done on the kernel and drivers as well,
> specifically to the parts relating to AllWinner, or in other words will
> there be engineers at Linaro working on code specific to AllWinner?
>
> * I understand there's no AllWinner Landing Team at Linaro, so there won't
> be engineering builds targeting AllWinner hardware released by Linaro. Does
> AllWinner plan to eventually put more resources into Linaro?

That's the key question. Will they commit money and people to Linaro?
It not it is just pointless window dressing.

--
Jon Smirl
jons...@gmail.com

[Maxime Ripard]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2014 at 08:27:59AM -0400, jons...@gmail.com wrote:
> If their user manuals and datasheets contained the same info that is in the
> ones from TI or Freescale, that would eliminate 90% of the things I want to
> ask them.
>
> For example, right now I need to know the maximum clock frequency allowed
> on the I2S_MCLK output pin and it is not spec'd in the datasheet.
>
> I suspect they could eliminate 50% of their support burden by doing two
> things:
> 1) Full documentation in the manuals/datasheets
> 2) Put the SDKs up on a public server so that people can be sure they are
> using the most recent ones.
>
> And then make a formal support system so that they can track what questions
> keep getting asked over and over again so that they can put the answer to
> those questions in a FAQ on the doc server.

Yes, that would be very valuable.

[Henrik Nordström]

ons 2014-08-06 klockan 08:27 -0400 skrev jons...@gmail.com:

> I suspect they could eliminate 50% of their support burden by doing
> two things:
> 1) Full documentation in the manuals/datasheets
> 2) Put the SDKs up on a public server so that people can be sure they
> are using the most recent ones.

Keep in mind that Allwinner are used to not having many outside
developers working on code for their chips. The SDK is produced by a
fairly small team of people, and their main target market is high wolume
tablets, where all is using their SDK and supported periperial devices
(touch screens etc), and even large part of the PCB designs are done by
a small group and then copied as-is by others.

Going from that to full documented chip with a lot of code developed &
maintained outside is very very far and they will need a lot of help and
positive guidance on how to move forward.

Demanding is not the right approach. Allwinner is not dependent on
linux-sunxi at all for the bulk of their market share.

Regards
Henrik

[Maxime Ripard]

That's actually a pretty good set of questions, thanks :)

Maxime

--
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons

Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Simos Xenitellis]

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 3:00 PM, maxime.ripard <maxime...@free-electrons.com> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 06, 2014 at 12:43:50PM +0300, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> Thanks all for the replies!
>
> I composed the document for Nicolas and I hope he manages to arrange for a
> video interview.
> The two main aspects were that what Allwinner currently provides (to the
> developer communities) is not sufficient,
> and that what is needed is a direct contact from Allwinner to the
> linux-sunxi community
> in order to sort out issues as they develop.

I'm a bit concerned about this to be honest.

No other SoC vendor will give you that sort of thing for free.
And no other SoC vendor will either send dev boards to any random dude
on the internet.

I don't think you could show up and just require that.

I think the bar has been set quite low so there should be little concern.

That is, Nicolas will probably try to arrange for an interview to discuss about open-source development at Allwinner.

He may try the style of his existing videos (camera on hand, visit offices and talk directly to employees)

or take an interview with a spokesperson of Allwinner.

He should describe the need to have upstream support for Allwinner SoCs, 

and the need to have some direct contact with Allwinner on open-source software development.

He can use the argument: look, Rockchip has DT files in the Linux kernel, and there are none from Allwinner.

Or, if you want to enter the server market, then it is quite important to have 

mainline Linux kernel support.

The effort happening from linux-sunxi is for the benefit of Allwinner. 

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Jean-Luc Aufranc <cnx...@cnx-software.com> wrote:

I'm not sure if this is the kind of question you would consider, but I once asked them a few questions about AllWinner and Linaro, and they acknowledge my message, saying they will reply later. (That was about 6 weeks ago...). Here's the list:

* Why did AllWinner decide to join Linaro, and especially the Digital Home Group? 

In hindsight, I can understand why they did not answer yet. They may have not put substantial resources yet, so they are probably postponing until they have something that can be announced. 

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 12:51 AM, Henrik Nordström <hen...@henriknordstrom.net> wrote:

ons 2014-08-06 klockan 08:27 -0400 skrev jons...@gmail.com:

> I suspect they could eliminate 50% of their support burden by doing
> two things:
> 1) Full documentation in the manuals/datasheets
> 2) Put the SDKs up on a public server so that people can be sure they
> are using the most recent ones.

Keep in mind that Allwinner are used to not having many outside
developers working on code for their chips. The SDK is produced by a
fairly small team of people, and their main target market is high wolume
tablets, where all is using their SDK and supported periperial devices
(touch screens etc), and even large part of the PCB designs are done by
a small group and then copied as-is by others.

Going from that to full documented chip with a lot of code developed &
maintained outside is very very far and they will need a lot of help and
positive guidance on how to move forward.

I think that this describes the situation, and we should take that into account when interacting with Allwinner.

In addition, companies in China/Korea/Japan tend to be rigidly hierarchical, 

so you tend to need to persuade someone high in the ranks.

Thus, if Nicolas gets to talk to Allwinner about these issues and, for example, to someone like that guy at

http://armdevices.net/2014/07/18/allwinner-a80ts-solution-development-cycle/

then it would be a step forward.

Demanding is not the right approach. Allwinner is not dependent on
linux-sunxi at all for the bulk of their market share.

The argument about the A80 being used in a server environment is quite strong and requires mainline Linux kernel support.

In addition, Allwinner would probably want to grown in new markets, such as tablets with Firefox OS (Mozilla Foundation) or Ubuntu (Canonical).

Both these would ideally require mainline Linux kernel support (and uboot, etc). 

There was a recent mail here about 500 A31 tablets running Firefox OS and having a exotic issue with OS/X.

Still, the millions of the chipsets go to the Android devices as you say.

Simos

[jons...@gmail.com]

Might want to give them the questions ahead of time so that they can
prepare answers. We'll get better answers that way. If you spring a
hard question they just won't answer.

[Vincent B.]

On 07/08/2014 16:43, Simos Xenitellis wrote:
> He can use the argument: look, Rockchip has DT files in the Linux kernel, and
> there are none from Allwinner.
> Or, if you want to enter the server market, then it is quite important to have
> mainline Linux kernel support.
> The effort happening from linux-sunxi is for the benefit of Allwinner.

Hi,

Not sure what you mean by that, Allwinner has none. There are sunxi DTS in the
Linux kernel (not contributed by Allwinner). There are Rockchip files as well,
not submitted by Rockchip. I don't see any difference between Rockchip and
Allwinner in this case, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Cheers,

Vincent

[Chen-Yu Tsai]

If you're following linux-arm-kernel, you'll see that Rockchip has started
submitting various drivers for their newest SoC, RK3288. Such drivers include
PWM, SPI, dwc2 USB OTG.

MediaTek has started their mainline effort as well.


Cheers
ChenYu

[Koen Kooi]

And a DRM driver to bring up the framebuffer.

[Simos Xenitellis]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2014 at 9:46 AM, Vincent B. <v...@luminar.eu.org> wrote:

Not sure what you mean by that, Allwinner has none. There are sunxi DTS in the
Linux kernel (not contributed by Allwinner). There are Rockchip files as well,
not submitted by Rockchip. I don't see any difference between Rockchip and
Allwinner in this case, please correct me if I'm wrong.

You are right. I was looking at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/arch/arm/boot/dts

and could find "rockchip" but no "allwinner" or "a10", etc.

The Allwinner DTS files do not mention "Allwinner" or chipset name (like A10) but have the platform name "sunNi", N=4..7.

I should have provided links to the active contributions from RockChip, for example, 

http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2014-July/269779.html

Simos

[Henrik Nordström]

tor 2014-08-07 klockan 17:43 +0300 skrev Simos Xenitellis:

> In addition, companies in China/Korea/Japan tend to be rigidly
> hierarchical,
> so you tend to need to persuade someone high in the ranks.

From what I can understand it's more the mid ranks needing a better
understanding of what Open Source means and how to deal with it.

> The argument about the A80 being used in a server environment is quite
> strong and requires mainline Linux kernel support.

Right, I see now that SATA support have been confirmed, even SATA PM
support apparently. This makes it a quite good fit for many server
applications.

Now only missing some PCI-e lanes and you have a full-fledged server
SoC.

Regards
Henrik

[Bastiaan van den Berg]

I just want to know if A80 will get SATA in a future version!
​Non-SATA machines are so counter productive for me :(

Maybe some A82 version with extra SATA added?

--

buZz

[Michal Suchanek]

Maybe better something more general like USB3 or PCIe.

Although I wonder if the CPU is powerful enough to benefit much from
those at least you get interface to which you can connect disks *and*
other random stuff that needs fast interface.

Thanks

Michal

[Michal Suchanek]

Plus it seems it has SATA anyway

[maxime.ripard]

I think before we told them we *need* it, we should explain why it's
important for them. I'm not sure they fully realize that yet, and it's
on what we should focus. It takes education, and not just a video
interview.

> He can use the argument: look, Rockchip has DT files in the Linux kernel,
> and there are none from Allwinner.

Both of them have. And until very recently, coming from the same
source: hobbyists. Rockchip has started in the past couple monthes to
work on it.

> Or, if you want to enter the server market, then it is quite
> important to have mainline Linux kernel support.

That is true, but again, you're just making a statement, without
explaining why.

> The effort happening from linux-sunxi is for the benefit of Allwinner.

Are we talking about 3.4 or mainline here?

> > > I suspect they could eliminate 50% of their support burden by doing
> > > two things:
> > > 1) Full documentation in the manuals/datasheets
> > > 2) Put the SDKs up on a public server so that people can be sure they
> > > are using the most recent ones.
> >
> > Keep in mind that Allwinner are used to not having many outside
> > developers working on code for their chips. The SDK is produced by a
> > fairly small team of people, and their main target market is high wolume
> > tablets, where all is using their SDK and supported periperial devices
> > (touch screens etc), and even large part of the PCB designs are done by
> > a small group and then copied as-is by others.
> >
> > Going from that to full documented chip with a lot of code developed &
> > maintained outside is very very far and they will need a lot of help and
> > positive guidance on how to move forward.
> >
>
> I think that this describes the situation, and we should take that into
> account when interacting with Allwinner.

Yep. Again, I'm not sure an interview is the proper way to express this.

> > Demanding is not the right approach. Allwinner is not dependent on
> > linux-sunxi at all for the bulk of their market share.
>
> The argument about the A80 being used in a server environment is quite
> strong and requires mainline Linux kernel support.

Multiple examples show that the server market doesn't "require"
that. See NX-BOX and mininodes.

> In addition, Allwinner would probably want to grown in new markets, such as
> tablets with Firefox OS (Mozilla Foundation) or Ubuntu (Canonical).
> Both these would ideally require mainline Linux kernel support (and uboot,
> etc).
> There was a recent mail here about 500 A31 tablets running Firefox OS and
> having a exotic issue with OS/X.

Which shows that Firefox OS can accomodate pretty well with a vendor kernel.

I'm playing a bit the devil's advocate here, but it's really answers
that you should expect.

--
Maxime Ripard, Free Electrons

Embedded Linux, Kernel and Android engineering
http://free-electrons.com

[Jean-Luc Aufranc]

I finally got my answers. They are not too specific however...
http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/08/21/interview-with-allwinner-regarding-their-linaro-membership/