Historically on ARC we started from initramfs-based images because:
a) It was much easier to debug especially when toolchain and other
components were changing quite dynamically
b) It was our usual approach for embedded Linux
But now with ARC port of Lede/OpenWRT getting more stable and mature
we're ready for more real-life scenarios with FS permanently stored
on SD-card. This essentially benefits from ability to setup devices
that survive reboots with all settings and extra packages kept in place.
Still we keep an ability to build images with initramfs.
This allows us to use storage-less simulators for testing still.
Signed-off-by: Alexey Brodkin <abrodkin@synopsys.com>
Cc: John Crispin <john@phrozen.org>
Cc: Jo-Philipp Wich <jo@mein.io>
This patch introduces support of new boards with ARC cores.
[1] Synopsys SDP board
This is a new-generation development board from Synopsys that
consists of base-board and CPU tile-board (which might have a real
ASIC or FPGA with CPU image).
It sports a lot of DesignWare peripherals like GMAC, USB, SPI, I2C
etc and is intended to be used for early development of ARC-based
products.
[2] nSIM
This is a virtual board implemented in Synopsys proprietary
software simulator (even though available for free for open source
community). This board has only serial port as a peripheral and so
it is meant to be used for runtime testing which is especially
useful during bring-up of new tools and platforms.
What's also important ARC cores are very configurable so there're
many variations of options like cache sizes, their line lengths,
additional hardware blocks like multipliers, dividers etc. And this
board could be used to make sure built software still runs on
different HW configurations.
Cc: Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org>
Cc: Jo-Philipp Wich <jow@openwrt.org>
Cc: Jonas Gorski <jogo@openwrt.org>
Signed-off-by: Alexey Brodkin <abrodkin@synopsys.com>
SVN-Revision: 47589
