Linux 4.10, Bootlin contributions

After 8 release candidates, Linus Torvalds released the final 4.10 Linux kernel last Sunday. A total of 13029 commits were made between 4.9 and 4.10. As usual, LWN had a very nice coverage of the major new features added during the 4.10 merge window: part 1, part 2 and part 3. The KernelNewbies Wiki has an updated page about 4.10 as well.

On the total of 13029 commits, 116 were made by Bootlin engineers, which interestingly is exactly the same number of commits we made for the 4.9 kernel release!

Our main contributions for this release have been:

  • For Atmel platforms, Alexandre Belloni added support for the securam block of the SAMA5D2, which is needed to implement backup mode, a deep suspend-to-RAM state for which we will be pushing patches over the next kernel releases. Alexandre also fixed some bugs in the Atmel dmaengine and USB gadget drivers.
  • For Allwinner platforms
    • Antoine Ténart enabled the 1-wire controller on the CHIP platform
    • Boris Brezillon fixed an issue in the NAND controller driver, that prevented from using ECC chunks of 512 bytes.
    • Maxime Ripard added support for the CHIP Pro platform from NextThing, together with many addition of features to the underlying SoC, the GR8 from Nextthing.
    • Maxime Ripard implemented audio capture support in the sun4i-i2s driver, bringing capture support to Allwinner A10 platforms.
    • Maxime Ripard added clock support for the Allwinner A64 to the sunxi-ng clock subsystem, and implemented numerous improvements for this subsystem.
    • Maxime Ripard reworked the pin-muxing driver on Allwinner platforms to use a new generic Device Tree binding, and deprecated the old platform-specific Device Tree binding.
    • Quentin Schulz added a MFD driver for the Allwinner A10/A13/A31 hardware block that provides ADC, touchscreen and thermal sensor functionality.
  • For the RaspberryPi platform
    • Boris Brezillon added support for the Video Encoder IP, which provides composite output. See also our recent blog post about our RaspberryPi work.
    • Boris Brezillon made a number of improvements to clock support on the RaspberryPi, which were needed for the Video Encoder IP support.
  • For the Marvell ARM platform
    • Grégory Clement enabled networking support on the Marvell Armada 3700 SoC, a Cortex-A53 based processor.
    • Grégory Clement did a large number of cleanups in the Device Tree files of Marvell platforms, fixing DTC warnings, and using node labels where possible.
    • Romain Perier contributed a brand new driver for the SPI controller of the Marvell Armada 3700, and therefore enabled SPI support on this platform.
    • Romain Perier extended the existing i2c-pxa driver to support the Marvell Armada 3700 I2C controller, and enabled I2C support on this platform.
    • Romain Perier extended the existing hardware number generator driver for OMAP to also be usable for SafeXcel EIP76 from Inside Secure. This allows to use this driver on the Marvell Armada 7K/8K SoC.
    • Romain Perier contributed support for the Globalscale EspressoBin board, a low-cost development board based on the Marvell Armada 3700.
    • Romain Perier did a number of fixes to the CESA driver, used for the cryptographic engine found on 32-bit Marvell SoCs, such as Armada 370, XP or 38x.
    • Thomas Petazzoni fixed a bug in the mvpp2 network driver, currently only used on Marvell Armada 375, but in the process of being extended to be used on Marvell Armada 7K/8K as well.
  • As the maintainer of the MTD NAND subsystem, Boris Brezillon did a few cleanups in the Tango NAND controller driver, added support for the TC58NVG2S0H NAND chip, and improved the core NAND support to accommodate controllers that have some special timing requirements.
  • As the maintainer of the RTC subsystem, Alexandre Belloni did a number of small cleanups and improvements, especially to the jz4740

Here is the detailed list of our commits to the 4.10 release:

Author: Thomas Petazzoni

Thomas Petazzoni is Bootlin's co-owner and CEO. Thomas joined Bootlin in 2008 as a kernel and embedded Linux engineer, became CTO in 2013, and co-owner/CEO in 2021. More details...

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