Bootlin contributes Linux support for Microsemi MIPS SoC

VSC7513 Block Diagram
Microsemi VSC7513 Block Diagram
Earlier this month, Bootlin engineer Alexandre Belloni posted a patch series (in its second version) adding initial support for Microsemi Ocelot SoCs, the VSC7513 and VSC7514. These SoCs are used for switches, so the biggest part of the chip is a switch fabric, built around a MIPS core and a few basic peripherals. While Bootlin generally works on ARM platforms and has contributed support for numerous ARM processors in the Linux kernel, for this project we are contributing the support for a MIPS processor.

Alexandre’s initial patch series contains the basic support for the SoC:

All in all, this patch series only adds support to boot the platform up to a shell, with interrupts, pin-muxing, GPIOs and UARTs enabled. Additional features will be contributed later, especially support for the switch fabric in the form of a switchdev driver.

We are happy to be working on Microsemi platforms, and to bring the support for yet another hardware platform to the official Linux kernel.

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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