We are pleased to announce the 16.06 release for the Reference Software Platform project!

This is the fourth release, and like its predecessors, it has seen quite a few changes and improvements for both Consumer and Enterprise platforms.

The Reference Software Platform has seen many substantial changes, among other more subtle ones.

Below is a list of some of this release’s highlights:

Common:

• Kernel:

  * Unified tree shared between the CE and EE builds.
  
  
  * 4.4.11-based, including some under-review topic branches to extend the features and platform hardware support.
  
  
  * Device-Tree support for CE; ARM ACPI and PCIe support for Enterprise.
  
  
  * Added OP-TEE support
  
  
    * Enabled on HiKey and Juno-r1
  
  
  
  
  
  * Supports Reference HW platforms HiKey and Cello
  
  
    * Other Test Platforms include: Dragonboard 410c, Hisilicon D02 and D03, APM X-Gene, HP Proliant m400, AMD Overdrive, Qualcomm Q2432:ZB, and Cavium ThunderX.
  
  
  
  
  
  * Single kernel config for all platforms in arch/arm64/configs/distro.config
  

  Single kernel binary (package) for all platforms

• Bootloader:

  • UEFI OpenPlatformPkg (upstream) now contains reference implementations for Huawei D02/D03, AMD Overdrive and LeMaker Cello

  • U-boot support in DB410c images to allow easier handling of images

Consumer Edition:

• Reference hardware platform:

  • LeMaker Hikey

• Other supported test platforms:

  • Dragonboard 410c

• Overall CE Debian platform features, validated as part of the release:

  • UEFI with DT

  • Upgrade to Debian 8.5 “Jessie”

  • Upgrade to the unified 4.4.11 Linux Kernel

  • Upgrade graphics components: Mesa 11.1.2 and XServer 1.17.3a

  • Rootfs automatically resized during the first boot

• CE Debian RPB for HiKey:

  • OP-TEE integrated by default

  • UEFI updated to use the latest development trees based on Tianocore + OpenPlatformPkg

• CE Debian build for DragonBoard™ 410c:

  • U-boot chain-loaded from LK

• CE OE/Yocto RPB:

  • First OpenEmbedded-based RPB, including several changes and components merged from the LHG OE layers

  • Dragonboard 410c and HiKey support

  • HiKey features:

    • OP-TEE initial support

    • Mali support for HiKey

  • Dragonboard 410c features:

    • GPU, WLAN, BT, audio, LS I/O, camera and GPS

Enterprise Edition:

• Reference hardware platform:

  • LeMaker Cello

• Other supported test platforms:

  • AMD Overdrive A0 and B0

  • Hisilicon D02

  • Hisilicon D03 (new)

  • APM X-Gene Mustang

  • HP ProLiant m400

  • Qualcomm Q2432LZB (new)

  • Cavium ThunderX (new)

• Overall platform features, validated as part of the release:

  • UEFI with ACPI

  • KVM

  • PCIe

• Firmware:

  • UEFI OpenPlatformPkg (upstream) now contains reference implementation for Huawei D02/D03, AMD Overdrive and LeMaker Cello

• Network Installers:

  • Debian:

    • Upgrade to Debian 8.5 “Jessie”

    • Use the unified 4.4.11 kernel

  • CentOS

    • Based on CentOS 7.2 16.03

    • Use the unified 4.4.11 kernel

• Enterprise Components:

  • Docker 1.9.1

  • OpenStack Liberty for Debian Jessie and CentOS

  • ODPi 1.0.0 based Hadoop

  • Spark 1.3.1

  • OpenJDK 8

  • QEMU 2.6

By taking on, and enabling more development boards to stimulate community involvement, a big push has been made to ensure this platform is used by as many 96Boards as possible. Highlights can be found here. If you would like to contribute to one of the many RPB components, instructions to do so can be found here.

Last week during OpenHours we had the opportunity to announce the 16.06 release of the Reference Software Platform (Video #8). This is the fourth release, and like its predecessors, it has seen quite a few changes and improvements for both Consumer and Enterprise platforms.

Since the RPB alpha release in October of last year (15.10), the platform has not stopped evolving. Highlights for each release can be found in the RPB github under “Previous RPB Releases”.

Please remember, there are plenty of resources all over the 96Boards and Linaro github pages. Feel free to check out the 96Boards forums, 96Boards wiki, or Freenode IRC channel #96Boards (there are many ways to access IRC, this website is one of them). Dig around the wiki, create a new forum thread, and/or post a question in the chat, myself or one of the 96Boards developers would love to help get your 96Boards up and running with the Reference Software Platform!

Don’t forget about the Open Hours every Thursday, where we will discuss this blog along with other pressing questions amongst a fun crowd of 96Boards users and developers over coffee. I hope to you see you there!

On behalf of the Linaro 96Boards team,

• Ricardo Salveti