After Android 4.4 SDK for AllWinner A31 last week, another AllWinner software development kit has been seen in the wild, this time for the new AllWinner A80 octa-core processor. A80 SDK includes source code for the Linux Kernel and U-boot, as well as buildroot, and various AllWinner tools. I’ve also noticed AllWinner A80 datasheet is available, but with the strict minimum information (45 pages).
Let’s get the code, and extract it:
Now we need to configure the build:
sun9i is the codename for AllWinner A80, not sure what w1p1 means. Dragonboard must be the internal Allwinner development board, but I just selected Linux, since the SDK does not come with Android, and finally I opted for optimus, which could stand for OptimusBoard.
You may need to install extra dependencies in your build machine, for example (in Ubuntu 14.04):
Now let’s start buildroot which should retrieve the toolchain, and build u-boot and the Linux kernel:
So it’s looking for Linaro gcc via several servers, (except linaro), and all links fail… So I modified buildroot/toolchain/toolchain-external/ext-tool.mk to use http://releases.linaro.org/14.04/components/toolchain/binaries/gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-4.8-2014.04_linux.tar.bz2 instead, and after adding some symlinks (arm-linux-gnueabi-gcc to arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc), it went a little further, but Busybox failed to build (error: ‘RLIMIT_FSIZE’ undeclared), so another toolchain may be needed, or some work is needed to make it build…
Several drivers in the kernel are binary only, or mixed binary / source, including the NAND driver, part of dram frequency scaling drivers, some MIPI code, a face detection library, part of USB3.0 code, and more.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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