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A comment on CHIP Pro. Parent comment

Re:CHIP Pro by Jasper_ on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @12:29AM (#12690434)
Every chip vendor I've dealt with, from Amlogic to Allwinner to Freescale, requires a signed NDA for full documentation. Public documentation is usually heavily redacted.

The GR8 seems to be a rebadged Allwinner chip, and the no-NDA datasheet seems to be next to useless, to be honest.

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Re:CHIP Pro by userbinator on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @12:43AM (#12690472)
One of the good things with the Chinese companies is that the datasheets will usually make it out into the public if the chips get popular enough. A byproduct of the "Gongkai" ecosystem:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297

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Re:CHIP Pro by ZenoArrow on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @12:38AM (#12690460)
> "The GR8 seems to be a rebadged Allwinner chip"

It could be, but reading up on the features of the C.H.I.P. Pro it supports mainline Linux. I assumed this meant without blobs. Is there mainline support for any Allwinner chips?

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Re:CHIP Pro by mappu on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @12:45AM (#12690473)
Many A20 features are in mainline kernels now, although sunxi-3.4 is still recommended for full hardware support.

http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix

EDIT: The GR8 is specifically called out on this page as having mainline support from kernel 4.9.

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Re:CHIP Pro by thom_nic on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @08:58AM (#12692362)
I've been running bananian with the 4.4 kernel on my bpi-R1 (A20 SoC) and everything seems to be working fine. Although I don't use it for anything graphical (it's a networking/storage/server device.) Can't say how much it's relying on binary blobs though.
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Re:CHIP Pro by mynameislegion on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @03:06AM (#12690912)
Sadly Allwinner did zero of that mainlining.
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Re:CHIP Pro by thom_nic on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @08:55AM (#12692343)
The GR8 is an AllWinner R8 with RAM in a single piece of resin. They are targeting product builders, see the section:

> Powered by a chip you can actually buy. > R8 SoC + 256MB DDR3 > 1 package. 1 price. > $6 in any quantity.

(that's $6 for their rebadged chip.) TBH this looks like not a bad solution for someone looking to board-down a linux capable product. I wonder if the GR8 needs a power mgt chip or if that's integrated into the SoC as well.

Back to your original question, NTC (among others) worked with AllWinner I believe to mainline some of the R8 code and reduce (or possibly eliminate?) binary blobs.

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Re:CHIP Pro by milcron on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @02:27PM (#12695348)
> it supports mainline Linux. I assumed this meant without blobs

Fun fact, there are blobs in mainline Linux. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux-libre#History

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Re:CHIP Pro by countingteeth on Wednesday October 12, 2016 @04:09AM (#12691127)
What do you mean by "full documentation" and "NDA"?

Go to NXP.com, sign up for an online account, and you can download full reference manuals for most of their products. They may hold errata and more low-level/non-user documentation closer to the chest, if your sign-up data is obviously fake or appears to be North Korean your account may not be activated, but it's not the case that you need to have an NDA signed in blood to get manuals.

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