ARM

Revision as of 03:08, 12 May 2011

The situation between MeeGo and the ARM community is quite peculiar currently. The role of Intel awakes a predictable suspicion but at the same time many ARM stakeholders are increasingly involved in MeeGo related activities. The mobile focus combined with the multiple form factors targeted and the open setup make MeeGo a very interesting proposition for chipset vendors in the ARM community and device vendors shipping ARM based products.

Technical specifications

MeeGo 1.2 ARM port comes with the following features:

• Baseline of ARMv7-A, float=vfpv3-d16, float-abi=hard and no thumb usage (means MeeGo.com releases are usable on all known ARMv7-A processors)
• Defined RPM sub-architectures for NEON and Thumb2 capability, optimize individual packages for NEON or Thumb2
• Built with and including Linaro toolchain 4.5 2010.09
• Cross-compilers and accelerated binaries built-in to the build system, making build time of packages comparable to that of X86 builds, with no difference in development usage between X86 and ARM
• ARM support in MeeGo release tools such as MeeGo Image Creator and in MeeGo SDK

Highlights

• The MeeGo project is committed to support Intel/Atom and ARM architectures. Decisions on roadmapping, architecture and development take this requirement into account.
• The Release Engineering team has specific roles for ARM related activities. Risto Lankinen is responsible for maintaining the ARM architecture-specific toolchain and libraries in MeeGo. Carsten Munk is responsible for maintaining MeeGo releases on the Nokia N900 hardware platform.
• #meego-arm is the MeeGo ARM team IRC channel as well as home to the MeeGo N900 hardware adaptation team.
• The Nokia N900 (TI OMAP3) is an official reference device for MeeGo Core and Handset. See ARM/N900.

Linaro

• Linaro aims to make ARM open source development easier and faster. Linaro creates a common software foundation for software stacks and distributions to land on and provide the best open source tools for developers to develop on. The focus is on low level software around the Linux kernel that touches the silicon, key pieces of middleware that enable new markets and tools that help the developer write and debug code. Linaro aims to maximize the potential of the latest features of ARM-based processors, helping provide optimized performance in a lower power envelope. Linaro is both a community and a supported project with engineering teams spread globally.
• ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments are MeeGo supporters and Linaro members: MeeGo Platform
• We must focus on these vendors' offerings (see below) to keep Linaro's support for MeeGo. Linaro's primary targets are Android and Ubuntu , which is a leading member.
• April 2011, David Rusling (CTO): Linaro, A Year of Change

See the article on Linaro inclusion in MeeGo.

Running MeeGo on ARM

Information on how to use MeeGo on ARM-based devices and contacts to the teams working on it.

Nokia

• The Nokia N900 hardware adaptation team, team lead: Carsten Munk (IRC: Stskeeps )
• MeeGo 1.2 Developer Edition for N900 project

QEMU

• QEMU allows you to try out MeeGo safely on your Desktop PC.
• QEMU instructions

Beagleboard

• Meego on Beagleboard from scratch
• MeeGo IVI on the Beagleboard
• Demo image from Linux Foundation

Texas Instruments

• MeeGo on OMAP4 PandaBoard (presentation)
• MeeGo on OMAP4 Blaze (video)
• October 2010: TI's OMAP4 Panda board project officially launched including a MeeGo support project: http://pandaboard.org/

ST-Ericsson

• June 2011: MeeGo on Snowball Board.
• November 2010: MeeGo Conference session: ST-Ericsson U8500 Linaro and MeeGo.
• September 2010: U8500 platform

Qualcomm (Unofficial)

MSM/QSD hardware adaptation

Samsung (Unofficial)

Hummingbird hardware adaptation

Archos (Unofficial)

Archos Gen7 port

Renesas

Video from Nomovok demonstrating MeeGo Core OS and an own tablet-like UX running on top of Renesas SH-Mobile AP4

Freescale

Video from Nomovok demonstrating MeeGo Core OS and an own tablet-like UX running on top of Freescale i.MX51

Nvidia (Unofficial)

Tegra 2 hardware adaptation

Engaging the ARM community

According to the marketing strategy, it is crucial for MeeGo to be a neutral platform. This implies the engagement of chipset vendors other than Intel and device manufacturers other than Nokia. The link between this goal and the ARM community is obvious.

How to improve the current situation? List your ideas below and get involved to make them happen. Proposals and discussions about this topic are welcome at the meego-community mailing list.

1. Highlight the MeeGo/ARM related projects and news in one place (this page?). Currently it's hard to follow.--Qgil 17:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
2. Get ARM stakeholders directly involved in the MeeGo project to start accruing merits.--Qgil 17:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
3. Invite and highlight the participation of ARM related topics and speakers in MeeGo events (happening already, more needed).--Qgil 17:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
4. Get MeeGo speakers in ARM related events, from the ARM community and its stakeholders (proposals?).--Qgil 17:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
5. Offer the participation in MeeGo working groups to companies involved in MeeGo products.--Qgil 17:05, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
6. Get ARM development products into the hands of MeeGo developers free or at discount! See http://forum.meego.com/showthread.php?p=14202 --Texrat 19:44, 1 December 2010 (UTC)