Linux on Hangxin MCU

[longk...@aisinochip.com]

Dear Sir, 

I'm marketing director from Hangxin Electronics China.

We have recently announced a very special MCU ACM32H5 featured in rich DRAM and Flash resouces.(databrief attached, more details needs to be translated)

I saw that your RTOS embox wants to target in running Linux app on MCU.

This feature matches ACM32H5’s marketing position. 

I would like to know if your team would like to go deep into more discussion.

e.g If my customer would like to support running certain open-source Linux driver, would it be possible to porting to ACM32H5? 

Considering it's not a easy job, charge will be involved we understand. 

---

longk...@aisinochip.com

[Anton Bondarev]

Dear Sir,

Thanks for the information.

The chip ACM32H5 looks very interesting and I believe Embox on it will provide cool features for the customers.

We are interested in the collaboration with Hangxin Electronics China to port Embox on ACM32H5. We need English documentation and at least one board. Maybe some Chinese Embox members will want to join to the issue in the future

 We can communicate directly for details.

Best regards,

Anton Bondarev

вт, 17 дек. 2024 г. в 11:08, longk...@aisinochip.com <longk...@aisinochip.com>:

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[Zeng Damon]

Dear Sir,

On Dec 17, 2024, at 4:32 PM, Anton Bondarev <anton.bon...@gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe some Chinese Embox members will want to join to the issue in the future

Hey Anton, I am happy and interested in participating in the development of this part within my ability.  As a Chinese, I could also communicate more accurate with aisinochip companies if needed.

Best regards,

Damon

[Anton Bondarev]

Hi Damon,

Thanks a lot for your suggestion!

Best regards,

Anton Bondarev

вт, 17 дек. 2024 г. в 12:00, Zeng Damon <sycamor...@outlook.com>:

[longk...@aisinochip.com]

Hi all,

We have ACM32H5 detailed documents in Chinese(but it's too large and get rejected). 

We are translating them into English now, but it takes some time. 

In terms of dev boards or test chips, there is no problem. 

I could provide some for free. 

@Damon, below is my phone number(same as wechat number)

+86-15868167492

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longk...@aisinochip.com

[longk...@aisinochip.com]

Hi Damon,

To sum up, Hangxin's customers have below issues to be solved on ACM32H5.

1.  support wifi/4G modules Linux USB drivers (usually original vendor only provide Linux or  windows version)
2.  support XML、Javascript, etc. (as I know, there is already some open source project like tinyML，miniXML，but we need to keep maintain the sub-version)
3.  support QT for Linux (QT resources are very rich but QT for MCU licenses is too expensive)

Thus, could I know below answers?

1.  How does Embox solve the issue that MCU is missing MMU?
2.  Is there any limitation of running Linux app on Embox? Is any Linux app possible to run on Embox?
3.  Does user need to change Linux app to be able to be adapated to Embox?

Sorry, because I'm not pure technical guy, maybe my question is too obvious. 

---

longk...@aisinochip.com

[Anton Bondarev]

Hi,

 support wifi/4G modules Linux USB drivers (usually original vendor only provide Linux or  windows version)

Now Embox has no wifi/4G drivers types, but we are going to add them. We hope we can use Linux drivers (from source) with small modifications. For example we could add so difficult types of drivers as 3d accelerations and ported Mesa3d (https://www.mesa3d.org/)

 support XML、Javascript, etc. (as I know, there is already some open source project like tinyML，miniXML，but we need to keep maintain the sub-version)

Now XML is not supported now but it's easy to port some open-source library for this. Embox solves version support because it uses the project's internal build system.

Embox has javascript support through duktape https://duktape.org/. It's easy to add some more variants.

Embox has also some other languages support (lua, tcl etc)

support QT for Linux (QT resources are very rich but QT for MCU licenses is too expensive)

Embox can run embedded (Linux) Qt version from scratch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rA_sHrQjjE

https://www.embedded.com/running-a-linux-application-on-stm32-mcus/

Now we have only qt4 version, but it's is no problem to add qt5 and qt6

How does Embox solve the issue that MCU is missing MMU?

Embox is linked statically and each app has its own piece of address space. There are some more tricks with linker for example multiple main symbols. It means you can run multiple apps but the only single instance of each

 Is there any limitation of running Linux app on Embox? Is any Linux app possible to run on Embox?

you can run multiple apps but the only single instance of each. We have some tricks to fix this issue, but it has specific for each task, not common

Most of C/C++ from source. Embox can run on MCU so difficult app as OpenCV (https://www.embedded.com/benchmarking-opencv-on-stm32-mcus/ )

 Does user need to change Linux app to be able to be adapated to Embox?

No, in most cases they need only add small additional files. So they can debug their apps and libs on linux and than run on a board as describde in this article https://alexkalmuk.medium.com/sip-phone-with-gui-on-stm32-1c3b4abf7ed4

Sorry, because I'm not pure technical guy, maybe my question is too obvious.

No problem. Thanks for the interest  in the project.

Will be glad to collaborate!

Best regards,

Anton Bondarev

 

вт, 17 дек. 2024 г. в 13:46, longk...@aisinochip.com <longk...@aisinochip.com>:

[longk...@aisinochip.com]

Hi Anton，

Regarding to embedded QT, how fast would it be from cold start to QT app launch successfully? 

Does embox kernel run as slow as Linux or it is fast as normal RTOS like FreeRTOS? 

Usually, Embedded Linux GUI launch could be optmized to as fast as 1s. 

If QT on embox could run faster, it would be very interesting. 

Also regarding to real-time performance, is there any scrafice? Customer user case is running Linux App and Real-time control thread at same time.

[Damon Zeng]

On Dec 20, 2024, at 4:50 PM, longk...@aisinochip.com wrote:

Hi Anton，

Regarding to embedded QT, how fast would it be from cold start to QT app launch successfully? 

Does embox kernel run as slow as Linux or it is fast as normal RTOS like FreeRTOS? 

Usually, Embedded Linux GUI launch could be optmized to as fast as 1s. 

If QT on embox could run faster, it would be very interesting. 

Also regarding to real-time performance, is there any scrafice? Customer user case is running Linux App and Real-time control thread at same time

Hi,

Glad for your reply. "How Fast" is a very obscure concept and I don't think it can be measured just by absolute time. There are many factors that affect "How Fast" such as MCU performance, MCU load rate, number of tasks, etc.

What is certain is that Embox is a modular and highly customizable OS with considerable performance. With limited resources MCU, we have to make trade-offs. :)

The final right of explanation belongs to Anton Bondarev

Best regards,

Damon

[Anton Bondarev]

Hi,

Yes, embox boots really fast (as FreeRTOS). it needs several seconds (~5) Qt example on stm. It takes so much time because we need to copy a qt image (3.5 mb) to DRAM.

Usually it takes less then a second to start embox with all apps.

Yes, you can use linux apps in a real-time environment, and mix them with your own hard real-time apps. You need only set threads' priorities.

And as said Damon, you can configure your target system very detailedly.

Best regards,

Anton

пт, 20 дек. 2024 г. в 12:12, Damon Zeng <sycamor...@outlook.com>:

[longk...@aisinochip.com]

Hi Anton,

ACM32H5 SiP 4MB NOR XiP Flash(boot code directly) and 8MB XiP PSRAM(if XiP Flash runs too slow, you could load code into PSRAM）

We hope basic GUI could  be booted directly from NOR Flash and rich performance GUI could run inside PSRAM. (Flash-to-PSRAM copying run in the background after basic GUI is set up)How

What's the size of embox's boot image apart from qt image? Will 4MB be enough for embox basic boot-up?

[Anton Bondarev]

Hi,

ACM32H5 SiP 4MB NOR XiP Flash(boot code directly) and 8MB XiP PSRAM(if XiP Flash runs too slow, you could load code into PSRAM）

Great! It's huge capacity for many applications!

 

What's the size of embox's boot image apart from qt image? Will 4MB be enough for embox basic boot-up?.

Yes, it's enough.

Also GUI requires video memory (but as I remember ACM32H5 has 8 mb SDRAM). 

We described some graphic requirements and features in the article https://medium.com/@alexkalmuk/a-little-about-graphics-subsystem-internals-on-microcontrollers-d952cfd0966a

Besides that I would like to recommend the LVGL project as a light GUI lib https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrR9AWcMBfE

Best regards,

Anton

вт, 24 дек. 2024 г. в 05:32, longk...@aisinochip.com <longk...@aisinochip.com>:

[longk...@aisinochip.com]

Hi Anton，

           Besides that I would like to recommend the LVGL project as a light GUI lib https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrR9AWcMBfE

We have already ported LVGL to ACM32H5. But LVGL require commerical license and expensive GUI tool. 

QT for Linux is more open and have a lot of legacy code. 

[Anton Bondarev]

Hi,

I see. Thanks!

Best regards,

Anton

вт, 24 дек. 2024 г. в 12:00, longk...@aisinochip.com <longk...@aisinochip.com>:

[longk...@aisinochip.com]

Hi Anton and Damon,

How many ACM32H5 dev board do you require? I could ship them to you for free. 

We have a few customers who have started porting embox to ACM32H5 by themselves. 

They are developing digital walkie-talkie product (I guess there should be a group of people who would like to do 2nd time development of software radio)

Maybe it's a good way of puting embox to real user case. 

[Anton Bondarev]

Hi,

We have a few customers who have started porting embox to ACM32H5 by themselves.

I'm glad to hear it! Maybe could they connect with us to coordinate the  project?

They are developing digital walkie-talkie product (I guess there should be a group of people who would like to do 2nd time development of software radio)

Maybe it's a good way of puting embox to real user case.

Yes, It's a great idea.

How many ACM32H5 dev board do you require? I could ship them to you for free.

We need at least  2 boards (one for Damon and one for me). However it's better if you can give us 4 boards (2 for Daemon and 2 for me)

I connect with you directly to send the address.

Best regards,

Anton

чт, 6 февр. 2025 г. в 03:54, longk...@aisinochip.com <longk...@aisinochip.com>: