Linaro 11.08 Release with Linux Kernel 3.0.3

Linaro has just released version 11.08 based on Linux Kernel 3.0.3 with support or TI Beagleboard, BeagleBoard-xM & Pandaboard,  ST Ericsson Snowball, Freescale i.MX53 development board and Samsung Origen board.

Here are the highlights of the release:

• Android
  • The Linaro 11.08 toolchain release of GCC 4.6 has compiled the Origen, BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM, PandaBoard and Snowball builds, and are running Android 2.3.5 with a 3.0 Linux kernel. Together with the mainline kernel focused builds for BeagleBoard and PandaBoard and a preliminary i.MX53 build, the Android Platform Team ships 6 builds this month. A first!
  • Android Platform code aliasing violations have been fixed allowing the use of strict-aliasing for better optimizations with gcc 4.6 based toolchains.
  • The Android toolchain 11.08 has been released and has received numerous updates, including updated binutils and current gmp/mpfr/mpc. Benchmarks are available here.
  • libjpeg-turbo 1.1.1 and ffmpeg with support for H.264 and WebM build are available on Linaro Android builds. This allows Linaro’s Multimedia WG to more effectively develop and test their components in Linaro’s Android builds.
  • Android Team switched to Gerrit as the primary git repository hosting and review system. Next step is to close the CILoop by connecting LAVA and Gerrit that will allow us to most effectively include real test run results in the patch review process.
• Developer Platform
  • The Ubuntu Linaro Evaluation Build (LEB) 11.08 contains several package updates including: Compiz 0.9.5 2011.08 release which improves the user experience of the Unity 3D desktop, the linux-linaro kernel 2011.08 with the additional Ubuntu sauce on top, glcompbench 2011.08, and an updated version of libjpeg-turbo based on the 2011.08 release.
  • All Linaro images now use ext4 as the default file-system in order to take advantage of the performance improvements.
  • PandaBoard hwpacks now have support for U-Boot SPL, eliminating the need for X-Loader.
  • Linaro Cross Toolchain 2011.07 packages are now available for generic linux distributions and will work on Ubuntu LTS and the most popular Linux distributions.
  • The Ubuntu Developer Image integrates the latest released version of linaro-powerdebug and linaro-powertop from the Power Management WG.
  • The Multiarch porting efforts resulted in several package changes bringing us another step closer to a cross compilable debian/ubuntu core.
  • Continuous memory footprint measurement and reporting is now available for LAVA. These results can be exported against the daily and weekly images.
  • The ARM DS-5 environment has been updated to support the DS 5.6 release.
  • Ubuntu Oneiric archive now includes the 2011.07 Freescale LT Kernel that enables the generation of Ubuntu images for i.MX53.
• Graphics
  • This month the Graphics WG brings quite a few goodies on the benchmark front: GLCompBench received an xrender based compositing test, GLMark2 has merged a 2D convolution benchmarking scene and 3D screensaver inspired benchmarking scene, and Spandex 1.1.4, a graphics benchmarking and testing framework for OpenGL ES 1/OpenGL ES 2/OpenVG, is now available in the Graphics WG PPA.
  • Compiz update: the addition of the per-plugin shader framework in Compiz. With this in place, Compiz plugins can add their own GLSL shaders to the rendering pipeline which allows for more advanced effects.
• Kernel
  • Update to 3.0.3 stable kernel and include the merge of 3.1-rc1 core ARM updates from Russell King’s tree.
  • Initial support of Origen board and support of BeagleBoard-xM revision C.
• Multimedia
  • libjpeg-turbo 1.1.90 released. Features are NEON-optimized 2×2 and 4×4 scaled iDCTs, support for accelerated forward DCT using ARM NEON instructions, NEON-accelerated quantization and RGB-to-YCbCr conversion.
  • The Multimedia Team is also involved in taking a closer look at openmax and how the life of vendors can potentially be improved. As part of that a OpenMAX integration vendor survey was conducted and results published: Here.
  • Initial face to face meeting with best practices presentations and information shared through the NEON optimization forum summit.
  • Multimedia test content for both Android and Ubuntu on http://samplemedia.linaro.org/
• OCTO
  • As part of the memory management efforts lead by the OCTO, version 14 of CMA patchset has been made available on git.linaro.org here, and a buffer sharing object framework RFC was posted to the linaro memory management special interest group (linaro-mm-sig) mailing list: http://lists.linaro.org/pipermail/linaro-mm-sig/2011-August/000509.html.
• Power Management
  • First release of PM-QA which provides a functional test suite to ensures that the basic PM building blocks are enabled and working on a board.
  • Linaro Powerdebug 0.5.2 2011.08 and Linaro Powertop 1.98 2011.08 released, with a focus on bugfixes.
• Toolchain
  • Linaro GCC 4.6 and 4.5 2011.08 releases: Linaro GCC 4.6 2011.08 is based on the latest GCC 4.6.1+svn177703, it focuses on fixing bugs found during the Android integration and in SMS. Linaro GCC 4.5 2011.08 release is based on the latest GCC 4.5.3+svn177552, and is focused on maintenance.
  • Linaro QEMU 2011.08 released. Linaro QEMU 2011.08 is based on upstream trunk QEMU, and includes a number of ARM-focused bug fixes and enhancements. Chief among them is that ARMv6 cp15 barrier instructions now work. Support for ARM1176JZF-S core has been added in both linux-user mode and system mode.
  • Linaro GDB 7.3 2011.08 is the first release in the 7.3 series. Based on the latest GDB 7.3, it includes a number of ARM-focused bug fixes.
• Validation
  • This round of lava includes bug fixes that ensure higher reliability of job execution and result processing. The lava-scheduler can now be properly started as a system daemon at init time with configuration file and logging support.
  • The lava-server web UI saw a set of improvements and refinements, including a better scheduler view, ability to display plugins on the frontpage and a new results view that allows the user to see the most recent test history for Linaro images and hardware packs.
  • LAVA infrastructure added support for live streaming the serial logs captures during job execution.
  • A first Freescale i.MX53 boards with a special power connector has been successfully added to the lab and is now part of the official board pool. Further upgrades of the lab included additional storage is for backups, tests with large contents, and sophisticated caching.
  • The lava-test framework got an upgrade that makes it easier to host tests outside of the official lava-test tree. From this month on individuals and working groups are able to supplement the lava infrastructure with their own tests. In addition, new tests for bootchart, smem, and xrestop were added to lava-test.

Go to https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1108/Release for further release details about the LBE, Android, Kernel, Graphics, Landing Team,  Platform, Power management and Toolchain (GCC / Qemu) components.

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