Linaro 12.09 Release with Kernel 3.6 and Android 4.1.1

Linaro release 12.09 has just been announced, and includes Linux Kernel 3.6-rc6 and Android Jelly Bean.

This release provides further improvement to Android Jelly Bean, Android benchmark characterization, an ARMv8 OpenEmbedded image, UEFI bootloader support for Vexpress, origen and pandabords, and some improvement to big.LITTLE and power management.

Here are the highlights of the release:

Android
- All Linaro patches are now available on Jelly Bean.
- Accelerated graphics is now available on Snowball Jelly Bean build.
- AndEBench, AndEBench Java, Linpack, CaffeineMark, Antutu 2D and 3D, NBench, Quadrant, I/O Benchmark, Vellamo benchmark hotspot characterization available.
- An Origen tracking build is available and will be released this cycle as a Linaro Evaluation Build (LEB).
- Audio works on Origen running Jelly Bean (WAV file only).
- A Monkeyrunner script to run Streamline has been completed.
- First rev of the NI PXIe-4154 based power measurement system is created. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bKyuxLl4iw&feature=plcp
- In-tree AOSP tests have been automated.
Developer Platform
- Foundation for the ARMv8 OpenEmbedded porting mostly completed, with kernel and a very minimal rootfs already available for internal usage.
- Kernel and test components were updated for the big.LITTLE project, based on the requirements for the 12.09 cycle.
- Substantial progress on the Debian/Ubuntu Perl and Python multi-arch/cross-build support, with enough data to be used and supported during the ARMv8 Debian/Ubuntu bootstrap.
- Hwpacks for Vexpress, Origen and PandaBoard now also include the support for UEFI, which can be selected while flashing the image with linaro-media-tools.
- Linux Linaro tree updated with the latest kernel development topics provided by Linaro (including big.LITTLE MP), and also against the 3.6-rc6 upstream snapshot.
Infrastructure
- The hardware pack v3 format now implements the “copy_files” directive, a list of files to copy from an optionally named packages to an optionally named destination.
Kernel
- big.LITTLE System
  - Reordering and code cleanup of In-Kernel Switcher (IKS) is done.
  - Inter-Process Interrupt (IPI) for CPU wake-ups is done and the IKS code was adapted to use it.
  - Hierarchical cache flushing code has been submitted, waiting for acknowledgment and acceptance.
OCTO
- Forward porting of existing UEFI port on Origen to latest UEFI release of Linaro.
Power Management
- Version 8 of the big.LITTLE MP integration tree integrated into LLCT and in use in the TC2 builds. It contains:
  - Updated version of task placement patches for the scheduler.
  - Bug fixes to the mainline scheduler.
  - PMU patches for b.L from ARM.
- Powertop rebased on upstream 2.1 release. Updated on Ubuntu and Android Linaro Evaluation Builds.
Toolchain
- Linaro GCC 4.7 2012.09, updated to GCC 4.7.1+svn191123
  - Adds support for the NEON vext instruction when shuffling.
  - Backports improvements to scheduling transfers between VFP and core registers.
  - Backports support for the UBFX instruction on certain bit extract idioms.
  - PR54252 ICE with too wide alignment assertion on vectorised code – Fixed.
  - PR54212 ICE due to generating a predicated NEON vdup instruction – Fixed.
- Linaro GCC 4.6 2012.09, updates to 4.6.3+svn191000.
- Linaro QEMU 1.2.0 2012.09, rebased on upstream’s 1.2.0 release.
- Linaro Toolchain Binaries 2012.09, updated to latest Linaro GCC 4.7 2012.09 and Linaro GDB 7.5 2012.09
  - gdbserver is stripped.
  - gdbtui is replaced by “gdb –tui”.
LAVA
- Versatile Express TC2 have been deployed in the Validation lab.
- LAVA deployment tool now supports a non-interactive mode and can be completely automated.
- LAVA test includes the validation test suite for TI ARM features on Linux.
- Snowball boards have been added in the Validation lab.

Visit https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1209/Releasefor a list of known issues and further release details about the LEB, Android, Kernel, Graphics, Landing Team, Platform, Power management and Toolchain (GCC / Qemu) components.

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.