armhf libraries for imx6

[stephanfr]

Hi all,

I have just started to develop on a IMX6Q based board.

Thanks to the great resources from freescale and third parties (especially yocto layers), I managed to setup a working BSP.

Yet I am now trying to switch from my current armel build to a armhf build and I fear that the closed libraries for GPU and VPU are not available for the armhf ABI.

Am I right or are these libraries already available and I was just unable to find them ?

If they are not available, is there any plan to deliver them in the future ?

If not that would be very disappointing for the IMX6 platform as the future of arm based Linux distributions for armv7 is obviously armhf.

Moreover armhf can lead to significant performance benefits compared to the softfp ABI (refer to https://wiki.linaro.org/OfficeofCTO/HardFloat/Benchmarks201205 for some figures)

I thank you by advance for any help,

Best regards

Stephan

[stephanfr]

Hi,

Well, my post is not very popular...

While digging in these forums, I have just found a related post here : https://community.freescale.com/message/317863#317863

Yet, I am unsure about the meaning of it : Does it mean that the armhf GPU libraries will be made available : I hope so... Also there is not a word about VPU but I hope it will be the same...

Can somebody provide some precisions ?

To my mind, iMX6 is the best SOC for embedded developpers today : real documentation, and real software ecosystem (both for android AND linux while many soc vendors only focus on android)

With such an edge on competitors and such an achievement, that would be a shame not to be able to rebuild 2 closed libraries for the ABI which is becoming the defacto standard for armv7 distros...

Please feel free to answer my post even if you don't share my views (and in spite of my poor english)   :smileywink:

Best regards

Stephan

[karina_valencia]

e: armhf libraries for imx6

xiaoli.zhang Apr 14, 2013 7:43 PM (in response to Karina Valencia Aguilar)

Even if we have hardfloat version of GPU/MM packages for Ubuntu 12.04 demo purpose, but please follow up the suggestion from marketing to get armhf support:

►Vivante GPU hardfloat binary – Timesys are working on providing a version of the hardfloat binary for all customers. Beta program has been established to test out the delivery process betweenTimesys and customers.

[stephanfr]

Hi,

I thank you very much for this valuable answer.

I have some questions regarding these promising pieces of information :

- Is the armhf  Ubuntu 12.04 demo publicly available ?

- Are VPU related libraries also provided ?

- Why do you switch from a model where you offer your customer great resources (with ltib or yocto build systems + binary blobs available to them) to a model where these customers have to deal with a third party (timesys) ?

As a customer I only need the great poky/yocto build system (and not the less powerful  factory from timesys) and the few binary blobs related to GPU/VPU...

Best regards

Stephan

[lily_zhang · Accepted solution]

Hello, Stephan:

See my answers for your question inline:

- Is the armhf  Ubuntu 12.04 demo publicly available ?

[No]

- Are VPU related libraries also provided ?

[All VPU source codes are published on Linux BSP delivery. So you can build VPU source codes for armhf support.

- Why do you switch from a model where you offer your customer great resources (with ltib or yocto build systems + binary blobs available to them) to a model where these customers have to deal with a third party (timesys) ?

As a customer I only need the great poky/yocto build system (and not the less powerful  factory from timesys) and the few binary blobs related to GPU/VPU..

[Currently the default release in FSL web site doesn't include the package which is built with armhf now. So we recommend that you can contact Timesys to get relative armhf libraries. Meanwhile, I knew Yacto is not in FSL web site. So if you have Yocto build system which hopes to be built with armhf, please contact your local FAE and sales for the support.

[stephanfr]

Hi Xiaoli,

First of all, thank you very much for your detailed and precise answer.

Here are my remarks :

1. OK, I thank you for this clarification

2. Well, I know that the gstreamer plugins are definitively open source and I welcome freescale for releasing these pieces of code for this great framework as open source components.

Yet I though (I am surely wrong, please correct me) that some closed libraries were still needed : I speak about the parser. Indeed I though that your universal parser aiur is dependent on closed libraries (they come directly as binary libraries in your package libfslparser-3.0.6.bin and are named lib_*codec*_parser_arm11_elinux.so). Can you please post the link where the source code for these libraries can be found so that they can be recompiled as armhf because I have everything except these libraries...

3. You are right.

Right now, the official freescale BSP uses ltib and does not package armhf libraries.

Yocto is another thing, I should not have spoken about it : In fact, I was alluding yocto because there are great layers provided by iMX community, because it is obviously the future of embedded Linux and because you, freescale, seem to have already been committed  by contributing the project (even if the official iMX BSP are not yocto based) and by providing QorIQ SDK which are based on yocto...

But it is not our main topic here...

I thank you for confirming that a local FAE will be able to provide armhf libraries. Better than nothing even it is always better to build software solutions which are not completely different from the BSP provided by freescale as a reference...

Speaking about timesys, their only official communication related to imx6 seems to be armel.  I speak about their iMX6 page here http://www.timesys.com/embedded-linux/resources/dev-center/imx6.  I was given the opportunity to test the demo that is alluded on this webpage and it is armel...

I have a last question : Do you plan to release armhf libraries in a future freescale reference BSP or will it always be a separate process to address with a local FAE ?

NB : I would like to mention that I am mainly interested in fb/dfb windowing support not X11/wayland as it should be really easier to provide stable libraries for these targets...

Best regards

Stéphan

[lily_zhang]

Hello, Stephan:

The libraries you talked about are proprietary libraries which have license agreement and hardfloat support is not in the default release. So to contact your support team is one better way to get relative information. Regarding lib_codec_parser_arm11_elinux.so you talked, they are mainly FSL audio codec relative. You can also use open source audio codec to bypass if you hope to try hardfloat building now.

For your last question “Do you plan to release armhf libraries in a future freescale reference BSP”. What I knew is “Yes”. It will have Yocto release on FSL web site which will include hardfloat support.

Best Regards

Lily

[stephanfr]

Hi lily,

So at the end,  I was not so wrong when I said that multimedia decoding was likely to involve proprietary libraries and that GPU libs were not the only ones which have to be converted to armhf ABI...

I thank you very much for pointing that these libraries can be replaced by open source ones : it really helps. (even if I fear that by default playbin will fetch the closed libraries) and for your information regarding yocto and armhf.

Best regards

Stephan

[wallyyeh]

Hi, Stephanfr:

    Do you get these armfh version multimedia codec libraries from your local FAE already?

    I'm facing the same problem and wanna to know is there ever a chance I can get these  lib_codec_parser_arm11_elinux.so for armhf.

Wally

[karina_valencia]

xiaoli.zhang can you continue with the follow up of this case?