Emtrion DIMM-AM335x SoM Supports Mainline Linux Kernel

When I cover system-on-modules (SoM), companies will usually provide some BSP (Board Support Packages) for older kernels, and did not submit their changes to mailine kernel, so I was interested in a news from Emtrion entitled “DIMM-AM335x: Linux mainline support ready“, which actually means they’ve done the work to support a recent Linux kernel (3.14) and provides instructions and code (device tree files), but did not submit patches to the linux-arm-kernel mailing list to get their changes added to kernel.org.

Let’s look at the hardware specs first:

• SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex A8 processor @ 720Mhz to 1GHz (AM3354 or AM3359)
• System Memory – onboard 512 MB SDRAM/optional 256 MB
• Storage – 512 MB NAND Flash (managed) + 2 SD card interfaces
• Display – LCDs I/F with resolution up to SVGA, with 4-wire touch interface
• Audio – Analog Audio with SSI I/F
• USB – USB 2.0 Host and Device
• Connectivity – 100BaseTX Ethernet
• Other I/Os:
  • 2x CAN
  • 4x serial interfaces
  • 4x analog inputs
  • 1x SPI, 1x I²C
  • 10x GPIOs
• Misc – RTC (Battery buffered)
• Temperature range – 0°C to 70°C (optional from – 40°C to 85°C)
• Dimensions – 67,6 x 45 mm

The company provide four different baseboard for development. You can find more details about the hardware on Emtrion DIMM-AM335x page.

The company provides BSP and development kit for Linux 3.2.0 (via Yocto 1.5.1), and QNX 6.5, but you can also get BSPs for Windows Embedded Compact 7, Windows 2013, and Android 4.0 on request. To make there SoM “Linux mainline ready” they’ve provided a tarball file with documentation and files namely:

• DIMM-AM335x-Mainline-Support-v001en.pdf – Documentation for Linux mainline support for DIMM-AM335x
• am335x-dimm.dts – Device tree file with the SoM
• am335x_mainline_defconfig – Kernel config
• uboot_script – Uboot script

And apparently that’s all what’s needed to support a Sitara AM335x SoM in mainline kernel. They have tested it against Linux 3.14.y from kernel.org, but it should also work with the latest version. They also have added this to Yocto in the FTP (see PDF). I’m not sure why they’ve have gone the extra steps and submitted a patch to add their module to mainline.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

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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