Linux kernel 5.17 released, our contributions

Linux v5.17 was released on March 20th, 2022. As usual, LWN covered the 5.17 merge window (part 1part 2) and Kernel Newbies has a detailed breakdown of the features in the 5.17 release.

Here’s a summary of our contributions, organized by SoC family, and a graph of contributions by each engineer.

Amlogic SoCs

Our engineers continue to maintain and improve support for Amlogic SoCs in the kernel. Jerome Brunet added sound card support for the S805X-based Amlogic P241 board to play audio through HDMI and the internal DAC.

Amjad Ouled-Ameur fixed shared reset control in the USB driver used by the Meson S905X2.

Neil Armstrong made improvements in the DRM subsystem for Amlogic. This will assist the development of a HDMI transceiver driver for the older Meson8 SoCs, and sets the proper architecture for future MIPI-DSI support.

MediaTek SoCs

We also continued to support MediaTek SoCs. Kevin Hilman improved platforms like the MT8183 Pumpkin board where the watchdog is enabled by bootloader, and the kernel driver needs to be enabled to avoid the watchdog firing and causing reboot part way through kernel boot.

Fabien Parent improved the MT8183 evaluation board device tree to able to read the temperature for the thermistor connected to AUXIN0. Fabien also made improve the device tree for MT8192 and MT8516 SoCs.

Texas Instruments SoCs

We continue to upstream improvements for TI SoCs. Corentin Labbe increased priority of DES/3DES crypto accelerator to make sure it is picked before software implementation. Neil Armstrong improved the handling of display modes in the DRM driver used by many TI SoCs. Drew Fustini enabled the RTC driver to power off certain boards with an AM335x SoC like the BeagleBone Black.

Rockchip SoCs

Corentin Labbe made device tree improvements for the crypto-controller in RK3288 SoC.

Networking

Neil Armstrong added support for the PLX Technology OX810SE SoC which is used in some Western Digital Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.

Misc

Neil Armstrong made improvements in the DRM subsystem including the driver for Synopsys DesignWare HDMI IP. Drew Fustini fixed a warning in a timer driver used on the Imagination Pistachio SoC.

U-Boot v2022.01 released, our contributions


BayLibre contributed to U-Boot v2022.01, the first release this year of the popular open source bootloader.

For those unfamiliar, U-Boot development takes place in release cycles which normally span two months. The merge window for the next release is open until the first release candidate. BayLibre was in the top 10 of companies contributing changesets during this cycle.

Neil Armstrong contributed many improvements for the Amlogic SoC family in this release:

  • Added new hardware support for:
    • Banana Pi M5
    • Beelink GS-King X
    • Odroid-HC4
  • Fix Android boot loop issue that could arise after updating the bootloader
  • Fix USB failure that occurs when PCIe link fails

Guillaume La Roque merged MediaTek SoC board configs to simplify build logic.

Amjad Ouled-Ameur fixed a GPIO issue at boot time on Texas Instrument SoCs by enabling the TI clock controller driver.