U-Boot on the TS7260

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Maverick-Crunch / EABI support for Crossdev

Since I've been using the TS-7xxx boards from Technologic Systems, I've been wanting to experiment a bit more with the Maverick-Crunch floating point coprocessor in order to squeeze a bit more performance in number-crunching apps.

Here are some simple instructions for creating an armv4tl-maverick-linux-gnueabi toolchain using Gentoo/Portage/Crossdev. These instructions are current as of 26. February 2008.

[ Update: 26. Feb, 2008 ]

The procedure is tested and I have yet to experience any bugs in any normal userspace applications. I know that lame now produces mp3s 25 times faster, and there were no audible errors, which basically confirms with Martin Guy's results that the Maverick FPU is being used.

The only thing that I am lacking is a better stress test - paranoia.c just segfaults, and I'm not really sure why.

I've moved the instructions, as well as instructions for creating an eabi Linux kernel and a full userland, to the Gentoo Wiki.

Things on the To-Do List for work

I have to push a new filesystem and kernel, as well as installation instructions for work.

Currently, we're using the TS-7xxx boards, with a Cirrus EP93xx / ARM 920T processor, for our embedded devices. The trouble is, that the boards ship with a non-standard 2.4 kernel and the bloated glibc library. I've successfully compiled and installed the 2.6.20.6 linux kernel as well as a uClibc userland for the boards, but now I'm in the process of working out bugs and installing other software that is necessary for the basic functionality of our boards.

To-Do:

• Make nfs-mounting work on the boards (recompile uClibc with full RPC, and then busybox)
• Build OpenVPN
• Build an FTP service
• Build JamVM
• Copy over the GNU Classpath that we have
• Build Avahi
• (etc, etc)

You may have guessed that this isn't such a small job. Anyway, I'm going to try to do quite a bit of it today.

Ciao!