Re: [MirageOS-devel] Mirage ARM port

[Andy Ray <andy.ray@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>> Initially it would be to target a Raspberry Pi (finally something I
>> can use it for!) but eventually I'm interested in getting it running
>> on an Altera Cyclone V Soc with dual-core ARM Cortex-A9s.
>
> Interesting -- is there a particular dev board that I can get that
> embeds this SoC?



Yup.  Terasic seem to do all the Altera dev kits these days and we
have a couple of these SocKits

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=816&PartNo=1

I think it was about £300 after tax+shipping which given the size of
the FPGA is astonishing value.

At some point I also want to look at Xilinx Zynq and with a bit of
luck our http://www.parallella.org/ board (which has a Zynq + Adapteva
DSP on it) will be arriving this month.


>> I understand there are 2 approaches - using a FreeBSD kernel module or
>> building up from scratch with a mini OS and implementing some device
>> drivers.  I'm easy either way.
>>
>> I've never used a BSD but I have hacked a realtime linux OS onto an
>> ARM Soc before so I know there be dragons ahead...
>
> The BSD dragons are far more cuddly than the Linux ones :-)
>
> I'd say that upstreaming the FreeBSD kernel module prototype would be
> a good intermediate step before a full port because:
>
> - it's mostly already there due to Gabor Pali's excellent work last summer.
> - can progressively swap out physical device drivers with OCaml equivalents.
> - good opportunity to tidy up the MiniOS layer and cross-compilation bits
>   before cramming it all into a SoC.
> - can mostly work on x86 (e.g. in a VM) and then swap over to ARM after.
>   I find this easier but the reverse may be true if you're an ARM guru...
> - there's already a good FreeBSD rPi port -- and maybe for the Cyclone?


I'll need to have a dig around and see what Altera are providing at the moment.


> To figure out how to upstream this properly, we do need to figure out the
> state of the various MiniOS branches.  Thomas Leonard is currently working
> on a Xen/ARM/MiniOS port as a fairly standalone effort, and Hwanju Kim
> is looking at a PVHVM MiniOS port -- both are in early days so far, but
> any comments or trees we should look at?
>
> I put Gabor's instructions for his prototype up at:
> https://github.com/mirage/mirage/issues/186


Looks like good place to start.  I'll also look at getting FreeBSD
running on my rPi.

-Andy

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