i.MX6 Main-line (ish) Linux kernel

Published on November 7, 2013

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As promised in yesterday's post about kernel version 3.10.9, this post contains a table of functionality present on kernel based primarily on the main-line linux-next tree from 2013-11-05.

The updates to that kernel needed to get this functionality are in our boundary-imx_3.12.0 branch on Github, and at the bottom of this post, we'll describe the changes in broad strokes.

As shown in the table, there is a substantial amount of functionality available, but some key pieces such as VPU, GPU, touch screen, and camera support are not yet available.

3.12.0 3.12.0 3.12.0
Function 4.1.0 kernel SABRE Lite Nitrogen6Q Nitrogen6-Lite
Boots Yes Yes Yes not yet
Peripherals
SD Card Yes Yes Yes not yet
Ethernet Yes Yes, sometimes stops working on nfs boot Yes, sometimes stops working on nfs boot not yet
USB Host Yes Yes Yes not yet
USB Slave Yes Yes Yes not yet
USB OTG Yes Yes Yes not yet
Audio out Yes Yes Yes not yet
Microphone Yes Yes Yes not yet
GPIO Buttons Yes Yes Yes not yet
SATA Yes Yes Yes not yet
PCIe Yes Yes Yes not yet
Wi-Fi Yes N/A not yet not yet
BT Yes N/A not yet not yet
SPI-NOR Yes Yes Yes not yet
Displays
Freescale LVDS Yes Yes Yes not yet
1024x600 LVDS Yes Yes Yes not yet
800x480 RGB Yes Yes Yes not yet
HDMI Yes Yes Yes not yet
Composite video out Yes not yet not yet not yet
Backlights
LVDS Yes Yes Yes not yet
RGB Yes Yes Yes not yet
Touch screens
eGalax (Hannstar) Yes not yet not yet not yet
ft5x06 (7" PCAP) Yes not yet not yet not yet
tsc2004 (7" Resistive) Yes not yet not yet not yet
Cameras
OV5642 parallel Yes not yet not yet not yet
OV5640 MIPI Yes not yet not yet not yet
ADV Composite video Yes not yet not yet not yet
Internals
Thermal sensor Yes Yes Yes not yet
CPUFreq Yes Yes Yes not yet
OTP Yes Yes Yes not yet
CAAM Yes No No not yet
RNG Yes No No not yet
MTD Yes Yes Yes not yet
GPU Yes No No not yet
VPU Yes No No not yet

If you look at the commit log for boundary-imx_3.12.0, you'll see a commit with the comment Add linux-next specific files for 20131105. This commit represents linux-next as of November 5, 2013, and each of the commits below this in the list are staged for release into the next kernel release of the Linux kernel.

Above that, you'll see a series of four patches by Marek Vasut regarding PCIe. These have been posted to the linux-arm mailing list, but have not yet been merged into linux-next.

As of this writing, there are 19 additional patches including three from Fabio Estevam, one from Peter Chen, and 15 by Troy Kisky. These patches have not yet been reviewed on linux-arm and have a high likelihood of changing during the process.