[Trac #46] Eliminate dependency on licensed code in Marvell firmware.

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#46: Eliminate dependency on licensed code in Marvell firmware.
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 Reporter:  jg           |        Owner:  jg         
     Type:  enhancement  |       Status:  new        
 Priority:  low          |    Milestone:  Opportunity
Component:  hardware     |   Resolution:             
 Keywords:               |  
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Old description:

> We are using a Marvell Wireless chip; it has an ARM 9 processor and
> something like 96K of RAM.
>
> Marvell licensed a proprietary microkernel as a framework for developing
> their firmware for the chip.
>
> Since Marvell does not own this code, it is not theirs to give away,
> though much/most of the code now in the firmware is not encumbered.
> A suitably motivated person could take the OLPC code and retarget it for
> some other small embedded operating system (e.g. TinyOS, maybe), and then
> the firmware could itself be open source.
>
> This would be very nice indeed, but OLPC itself does not have the
> resources to put into this.  If someone volunteers, we can make the code
> available for porting to a free system.
>
> Is there any posibility to use a different chip with O.S Firmware in the
> future...?

New description:

 We are using a Marvell Wireless chip; it has an ARM 9 processor and
 something like 96K of RAM.

 Marvell licensed a proprietary microkernel as a framework for developing
 their firmware for the chip.

 Since Marvell does not own this code, it is not theirs to give away,
 though much/most of the code now in the firmware is not encumbered.
 A suitably motivated person could take the OLPC code and retarget it for
 some other small embedded operating system (e.g. TinyOS, maybe), and then
 the firmware could itself be open source.

 This would be very nice indeed, but OLPC itself does not have the
 resources to put into this.  If someone volunteers, we can make the code
 available for porting to a free system.

Comment (by cjb):

 Rafael Ortiz says:
 > Is there any posibility to use a different chip with O.S Firmware in the
 future...?

 The Marvell chip has very specific features that are essential to us --
 stores its routing table in RAM, can forward packets through the mesh at
 low power while the main CPU is off, etc.  We could only consider using a
 replacement if one existed with these features.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/46#comment:7>
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