MIPS AR7 Platform Support Removed In Linux 6.7

[phoronix]

Phoronix: MIPS AR7 Platform Support Removed In Linux 6.7

With the MIPS CPU architecture at the end of the road in light of RISC-V and LoongArch, there isn't much going on when it comes to MIPS development for the Linux kernel. Most cycles these days just brings bug fixes and removing old/unmaintained platforms. The latest MIPS platform now being removed is AR7 with Linux 6.7...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/MIPS-AR7-Removed-Linux-6.7

[Zajec]

Relevant OpenWrt change: commit 4bc92c1e7526 ("ar7: remove unmaintained target") from 2020.

[Developer12]

Relevant OpenWrt change: commit 4bc92c1e7526 ("ar7: remove unmaintained target") from 2020.

Weird. I googled openWRT and AR7 and turned this page up: https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/hardware/soc/soc.ar7

I guess it could be clearer that these models are no longer supported.

[stargeizer]

Weird. I googled openWRT and AR7 and turned this page up: https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/hardware/soc/soc.ar7

I guess it could be clearer that these models are no longer supported.

These devices were common in the 2007-2009, back when 812.g was the standard. These normally comes with 4mb of RAM and 32 Mb of flash memory. All of these devices were EOL by openwrt in 2022. OpenWRT removed the support in 21.02.0. So efectively, as of today, there are no users of these hardware, as far as actual kernel development cares about.

[squash]

As best as I can tell there is only one company still actively producing (non-Longsoon) MIPS, and that's Ingenic. Not the most open source friendly, each chip variant has its own SDK they don't make publicly available, but they're relatively cheap and relatively easy to work with once you have an OS on them. I've been messing with them for the last year or so and its fun to find devices they were used in for various hardware hacking projects, and we've even got our own hobby development board built around one. less powerful but ultimately more interesting than a raspberry pi right now.

[Conan-cimmerian]

As best as I can tell there is only one company still actively producing (non-Longsoon) MIPS, and that's Ingenic. Not the most open source friendly, each chip variant has its own SDK they don't make publicly available, but they're relatively cheap and relatively easy to work with once you have an OS on them. I've been messing with them for the last year or so and its fun to find devices they were used in for various hardware hacking projects, and we've even got our own hobby development board built around one. less powerful but ultimately more interesting than a raspberry pi right now.

Also MCST produces MIPS

[squash]

Also MCST produces MIPS

MCST aka Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies? As best as i can tell they do not and have not produced MIPS architecture products, but if you have more info I am very interested. If our project sticks with MIPS it would be a huge boost to add a second potential supplier.

[Conan-cimmerian]

MCST aka Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies? As best as i can tell they do not and have not produced MIPS architecture products, but if you have more info I am very interested. If our project sticks with MIPS it would be a huge boost to add a second potential supplier.

As far as I can tell on their site, I found this pdf from 2014 that seems to indicate they produced MIPS related processors as part of their Elbrus series

i managed to find some specifications and it seems like they are MIPS based but I might be wrong

https://www.7-cpu.com/cpu/Elbrus.html

[squash]

As far as I can tell on their site, I found this pdf from 2014 that seems to indicate they produced MIPS related processors as part of their Elbrus series

i managed to find some specifications and it seems like they are MIPS based but I might be wrong

https://www.7-cpu.com/cpu/Elbrus.html

That PDF is from Imagination, who owned the MIPS architecture for several years. Nothing related to MCST.

The second document is using another meaning of MIPS, "million instructions per second" which unfortunately shares the same acronym. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second

[Developer12]

These devices were common in the 2007-2009, back when 812.g was the standard. These normally comes with 4mb of RAM and 32 Mb of flash memory. All of these devices were EOL by openwrt in 2022. OpenWRT removed the support in 21.02.0. So efectively, as of today, there are no users of these hardware, as far as actual kernel development cares about.

I meant in terms of someone being confused if they find one in their basement and decide to try putting openWRT on it. That page was the first search result and gives no clear indication that the hardware is unsupported.