arm64 as Tier 1 for FreeBSD 13

Trev freebsd-arm at sentry.org
Wed Jan 29 23:15:30 UTC 2020


Warner Losh wrote on 30/01/2020 08:51:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 2:42 PM Rodney W. Grimes <
> freebsd-rwg at gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
> 
>> I have no problem if some want to ignore RPI*, but as Poul says
>> FreeBSD does so at its own peril.  If its a man power thing lets
>> find it or make it!
>>
> 
> There's two issues. One is manpower. There's not too many people that want
> to hack on it. The second is information: it can be tricky to get from
> Broadcom which slows down any efforts to make progress. These two issues
> are interrelated... When it's hard to help out, it's easier to do other
> things. Ian is a prime example: he's had enough with the crappy docs on
> what he views as a crappy design so he chooses to spend his time elsewhere.
> This is his choice, of course. Others have tried to get USB or networking
> going on RPi4 have run into similar issues and got frustrated and quit out
> of frustration and inability to get the technical data they need in a form
> that's useful. So it's easier to work on other ARM and ARM64 platforms
> where data is available, vendors are more forthcoming and it's easier to
> get things done w/o all the stress and hassle. It's no different than the
> bazillion drivers we've written, or not written, over the years based on
> vendor support (or its lack).
> 
> So, absent some large FreeBSD user of RPi that can use their business
> relationships with Raspberry / Broadcom to reduce the friction AND can fund
> people to improve the port, the situation isn't likely to improve. I sure
> wish this wasn't the current state of affairs, but sadly it is.

This may be naive on my part, but has anyone contacted the Raspberry Pi 
Foundation for help obtaining the required information?

I notice there's even a Raspberry Pi Foundation North America 501(c)(3) 
charity, apart from the UK Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Perhaps something for the FreeBSD Foundation to help with.


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