[Sound-open-firmware] Real hardware (boards) on which the SOF runs

[Pierre-Louis Bossart]

Hi Gerion,

Zephyr support is still very new, if you want to start using it now it
has to be clear that you'll have to follow the bleeding edge firmware
development on TigerLake+ devices. All previous platforms will not have
Zephyr support and have been parked on a long-term XTOS-based support
branch.

The only Intel-based devices you can use for you own development are the
Up Extreme i11 boards or TigerLake+ Chromebooks in developer mode. These
two sets of devices use the community key and have the DSP configured.

If you want to get access to the Cadence Tensilica compiler, things get
complicated as well. Usually this requires an NDA. That means you may
need to use GCC with a lower performance to be expected since HiFi3
instructions are not supported by GCC just yet.

We should add this information in the 'Getting started' documentation.

Hope this helps,

-Pierre


On 1/30/23 08:22, sound-open-firmware-owner at alsa-project.org wrote:
> ForwardedMessage.eml
>
> Subject:
> Real hardware (boards) on which the SOF runs
> From:
> Gerion Entrup <entrup at sra.uni-hannover.de>
> Date:
> 1/30/23, 08:22
>
> To:
> sound-open-firmware at alsa-project.org
>
>
> Hi,
>
> we are doing operating systems research and think that the SOF is of
> great value because of its usage of Zephyr.
>
> We therefore wanted to get some real hardware where SOF is running on.
> However, that it kind of complicated.
> We know of some Thinkpads (Intel 12th gen) that are running the SOF.
> However, we also have access to another Intel 12th gen desktop PC on
> which the vendor seems to have disabled the Intel DSP forever (at least
> there is not setting in the BIOS/UEFI).
>
> Online, we only found the Minnowboard Turbot as a board that has an SOF
> enabled DSP. However, the board seems to be discontinued so we cannot
> buy it.
>
> Do you know of some (preferable low budget) boards on which the SOF runs?
> Is there some kind of hardware matrix for whole PCs (laptops, single
> board PCs) that are supported by the SOF? On the website, I have only
> found a list of CPU platforms [1].
>
> Best,
> Gerion
>
>
> [1] https://thesofproject.github.io/latest/platforms/index.html