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+--- Thread: Does the ROCK64 use any closed source boot loaders, firmware, drivers or other blobs? (/showthread.php?tid=4700)
Does the ROCK64 use any closed source boot loaders, firmware, drivers or other blobs? - mpb - 07-06-2017
Does the ROCK64 use any closed source boot loaders, firmware, drivers or other non-open blobs?
If so, how many and for which components? Thanks!
RE: Does the ROCK64 use any closed source boot loaders, firmware, drivers or other blobs? - xalius - 07-06-2017
What I saw so far is a first stage loader that is a binary (check https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/rkbin/tree/master/rk33 or RK's upstream) and of course ARM Mali. As boot0 in the case of Allwinner this loader initializes DRAM and then hands off to u-boot. RK has released u-boot spl as a replacement for this loader for RK3399 and RK3288, RK3368, so we should get a u-boot spl for RK3328 at some point. Otherwise you can check out their BSP sources at https://github.com/rockchip-linux
RE: Does the ROCK64 use any closed source boot loaders, firmware, drivers or other blobs? - mpb - 07-06-2017
Okay, so to summarize @xalius's above post, we have:
Boot requires:
first stage boot loader (closed blob) -> u-boot (closed blob) -> Linux kernel (open)
However, this might improve to:
first stage boot loader (closed blob) -> u-boot spl for RK3328 (open?) -> Linux kernel (open)
(Aside: According to info at https://github.com/rockchip-linux/u-boot, it looks like "spl" stands for secondary program loader.)
Also, the using ARM Mali GPU requires a closed blob driver. For all HDMI output? Or just for 2D and/or 3D hardware acceleration?
Is the network driver open?
Thanks!
RE: Does the ROCK64 use any closed source boot loaders, firmware, drivers or other blobs? - ayufan - 07-07-2017
first stage loader is closed, uboot is open
spl will in the future replace first stage loader
Mali is needed only for 3D acceleration, there's no 2D acceleration.
HDMI is driven by open source drivers. Kernel configures DW HDMI registers and maps memory where the FB is stored to be render by HDMI controller. The same FB is used by Mali to render 3D content. AFAIK all the rest codes to handle VPU are open.
So, closed blobs are:
- first stage loader with DRAM init code,
- MALI driver,
RE: Does the ROCK64 use any closed source boot loaders, firmware, drivers or other blobs? - dkryder - 07-21-2017
are wifi and ethernet open or just drivers from the chip maker? it is hard for me to figure out what is going on in
https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/rkbin/tree/master/firmware/wifi