Welcome to the wiki for the growing Linux development community around Amlogic Meson SoCs.

This community is focused around getting Meson SoCs well-supported by mainline Linux and mainline Linux distributions. Some work has been done to get Meson SoCs well-supported by mainline U-Boot aswell, to provide Single-Board-Computers an U-Boot alternative to the heavily patched outdated version maintained by Amlogic.

In January 2018 BayLibre wrote a post that summarizes the work done so far to get Meson SoC support into mainline Linux: How We Improved AmLogic Support in Mainline Linux

This wiki is not endorsed by or affiliated with Amlogic, Inc.

As we have a lot of work to do before we reach our goals, this wiki is not really suitable for end users yet - there are plenty of forum communities that offer disjunct Linux/Android spins with XBMC that you may be looking for.

Instead, we use this wiki as an information archive for those developers who are working collaboratively to bring Amlogic support to the existing Linux/open-source codebases and communities.

Current upstreaming efforts are focused around the S905/S905D/S905X/S905W/S912 SoCs (GXBB/GXL/GXM from the Meson GX family). Secondarily there are also some efforts around the S805 SoC (Meson8b), and the AML8726-MX (Meson6) since they are widespread in many consumer products. Effort to support the new Amlogic AXG A113d is currently ongoing.

• Meson6 : Dual 32bit Cortex-A9
  • AML8726MX
• Meson8 : Quad 32bit Cortex-A9
  • S802
• Meson8b : Similar as Meson8 but with Quad 32bit Cortex-A5
  • S805
• Meson8m2 : Similar to Meson8 (same 10/100/1000 MAC as Meson8b, H.265 UHD hardware decoder)
  • S812
• GXBB : Quad 64bit Cortex-A53
  • S905
• GXL : Quad 64bit Cortex-A53
  • S905D : Similar as S905, but with internal 10/100 Ethernet PHY (Gigabit Ethernet still requires an external PHY)
  • S905X : Identical to S905D but without Gigabit Ethernet
  • S905W : Mostly identical to S905X, 1.2GHz CPU frequency, video decoders and HDMI are limited to 4K30P, the DDR interface is limited to 16-bit
• GXM : Identical to GXL but with Octo 64bit Cortex-A53
  • S912 : Pin compatible with S905D
• AXG : Audio/IOT dedicated SoC derived from GX family with enhanced audio and MIPI DSI display support
  • A113D

For further indications : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amlogic#Comparison_table

Some development and final products are (partially) supported : Supported Hardware

v4.18 (work in progress)

• AXG: MMC controller driver support
• Meson8m2: add pinctrl support
• AXG: add Meson AXG support to the dwmac-meson8b Ethernet driver
• memory allocation fix for the pwm-meson driver (which can cause memory corruption)
• Meson8/Meson8b/Meson8m2: add support for the NAND clocks
• AXG: add support for the AO clock controller
• the MPLL clock driver can now round to the closest rate (based on the requested rate)
• Meson GX/AXG MMC: support for the reset line
• DT updates
  • GX: add hiubus system controller
  • AXG: add hiubus system controller
  • AXG: SD/eMMC/SDIO support (sd_emmc_b and sd_emmc_c controllers)
  • AXG: S400: add eMMC storage
  • AXG: S400: add AP6255 SDIO wifi
  • AXG: GPIO interrupt support
  • AXG: add the 32K alt aoclk
  • GX/AXG: add MMC resets
  • Meson8: add Cortex-A9 PMU
  • Meson8b: add Cortex-A5 PMU
  • Meson8b: Odroid-C1: enable the IR receiver
  • Meson8m2: add support for this SoC (“S812”)
• New board support
  • Tronsmart MXIII Plus (Meson8m2)

v4.17

• GX VPU power domain driver: small bugfixes
• reset driver: add support for level resets on Meson8b
• cleanups for the dwmac-meson8b driver (used on Meson8b/GXBB/GXL/GXM)
• clock and reset support for the USB2 PHY driver on GXL/GXM
• Meson8b GPIO driver fixes which make the GPIOs from the CARD, BOOT and DIF banks usable again
• usb: core: support for multiple PHYs per HCD (pre-condition for USB host on GXL/GXM)
• dwc3 support for GXL/GXM/AXG (pre-condition for USB host on GXL/GXM)
• fix ghost key presses in the IR remote driver
• new USB3 PHY driver for GXL/GXM/AXG
• PLL fixes for GXBB, GXL and AXG
• use regmap in clock controller drivers
• general clock updates for Meson8, GXBB, GXL and AXG
• add more SoC IDs (including S905W) to the GX SoC information driver
• SAR ADC support for the Meson AXG SoCs
• Meson8m2 support for the dwmac-meson8b (Ethernet) driver
• DT updates
  • GXL: add internal PHY interrupt
  • GX: fix UART register range
  • AXG: add i2c support
  • AXG: add pinctrl pins for RMII and UART
  • GX: add ethernet0 alias (to make Linux use the MAC address from u-boot)
  • Meson8b: update reset controller register range
  • Meson8: add reset controller and USB reset lines
  • Meson8b: Odroid-C1 Ethernet support
  • Meson8b: add the I2C clocks
  • GXBB: Odroid-C2: reduce eMMC maximum rate (fixes data corruption)
  • GXBB: add a wetek specific dtsi
  • GXBB/GXL: bump Mali-450 clock to 744MHz
  • GX: mark eFuse as read-only
  • GXL: USB host support
  • GXM: USB host support
  • GXL: enable USB host support on the following boards:
    • Khadas VIM
    • LibreTech CC (“Le Potato”)
    • Amlogic P212
    • Amlogic P230
    • Amlogic P231
    • Nexbox A95X
  • GXM: enable USB host support on the following boards:
    • Khadas VIM2
    • Amlogic Q200
    • Amlogic Q201

v4.16

• internal Ethernet PHY on GXL: code-improvements
• Ethernet (RGMII TX) clock (dwmac-meson8b) fixes for Meson8b
• DT updates
  • all SoCs: dropped SANA (“stream analyzer”) clock from SAR ADC
  • Meson8: updated L2 cache settings
  • Meson8b: updated L2 cache settings
  • Meson8/Meson8b: switch to the stable UART bindings
  • Meson8: enable GPIO IRQ support
  • GX: VPU power domain support
  • GX: add 5V HDMI regulator
  • GX: HDMI and CEC support on Odroid-C2
  • GX: use generic bus node names
  • GX: fixed Ethernet PHY GPIO interrupt line on GXM Q200
  • GX: add Ethernet PHY GPIO interrupt line on Khadas VIM2

v4.15

• USB controller interrupt fix for Meson6/Meson8/Meson8b
• SoC information driver for Meson6/Meson8/Meson8b/Meson8m2
• SD/MMC/SDIO driver for Meson6/Meson8/Meson8b/Meson8m2
• pinctrl: cleanups and minor fixes
• GPIO IRQ support on Meson GX as well as Meson8/Meson8b/Meson8m2
• eFuse driver for Meson6/Meson8/Meson8b/Meson8m2
• SMP (multi-core) and CPU hotplug support on Meson8/Meson8b/Meson8m2
• VPU power domain support on Meson GX
• internal Ethernet PHY on GXL: auto-negotiation fix
• UART SysRq
• minor fixes for the SAR ADC on Meson8 and Meson8b
• DT updates
  • Meson8b: add reserved-memory zones to fix system freezes
  • Meson8b: add USB support on Odroid-C1
  • Meson8b: enable GPIO IRQ support
  • Meson8/Meson8b: add the SDIO MMC controller
  • Meson8/Meson8b: add SMP and CPU hotplug support
  • Meson6/Meson8/Meson8b: add the eFuse
  • GX: enable the SAR ADC on Libre Tech CC
  • GX: enable the internal Ethernet PHY LEDs on Libre Tech CC
  • GX: enable the USB on Nexbox A95X (GXBB)
  • GX: pinctrl offset cleanup
  • GX: enable GPIO IRQ support
• New board support
  • Khadas VIM2 (GXM)
  • Tronsmart Vega S96 (GXM)

v4.14

• clock controller driver updates
  • GX: add SD/eMMC clocks
  • GX: fix divider flags
  • GX: add the AO CEC clock
  • Meson8/Meson8b: register reset controller built into the clock-controller
• DT updates
  • GX: GPIO line names for Khadas VIM and NanoPi K2
  • GX: CEC support (for all boards where HDMI is enabled)
  • GX: use the correct MMC clocks
  • GX: add MMC regulator settle times for NanoPi K2, Libre Tech CC, P200 and P201
  • GX: enable SD card UHS modes on NanoPi K2, Libre Tech CC, P200 and P201
  • GX: enable SD card SDR104 mode on NanoPi K2
  • GX: update to use stable UART bindings (fixes HCI UART where the bootloader doesn't enable the UART clocks)
  • Meson8/Meson8b: add the SRAM
  • Meson8: PWM support
  • Meson8b: cleanup duplicate code in watchdog node
• GX: SoC information driver (SoC version, etc.)
• AO CEC Driver
• Watchdog support for Meson8m2

v4.13

• DT cleanups
  • GX: reorganize alphabetically to better avoid conflicts
  • Meson6/8/8b: use interrupt pre-processor macros instead of magic numbers
• add HDMI and CVBS nodes for multiple GX boards
• pinctrl updates:
  • GX: add SPI (SPICC) and HDMI CEC pins
  • Meson8: (AO) HDMI CEC, AO remote output, I2S, SPDIF and PWM pins
• SCPI: fix thermal sensor reporting
• Meson8 support for the SAR ADC driver
• USB PHY driver for Meson GXL/GXM
• SPICC (SPI Communication Controller) driver
• Meson8 clock controller support
• USB support for Meson8 and Meson8b
• Hardware random number generator support for Meson6, Meson8 and Meson8b
• reserved memory zones (to prevent random crashes) on Meson8
• New board support
  • NanoPi K2 (GXBB)
  • R-Box Pro (GXM)

v4.12

• DRM/KMS: added support for HDMI output
• clocks: added clocks for audio, GFX (Mali)
• pinctrl: added pins for audio, missing pins for GXL/GXM
• phy: added GPIO resets for ethernet PHYs
• Add clocks and DT node for Mali-450 support for GXBB/GXL (using off-tree driver)
• usb: dwc2 support for Meson8
• i2c: driver code improvements and code cleanup
• Meson GX MMC
  • performance improvements
  • eMMC calibration support
  • CMD23 support
  • misc. cleanup and refactoring
  • descriptor chaining (DMA) support
• Enhanced board support
  • Amlogic P212 (S905X)
• new boards
  • Khadas Vim (S905X)
  • HwaCom AmazeTV (S905X)

v4.11

• SAR ADC support
• ADC laddered keys (P200 board)
• New board support
  • Wetek Play (S905)
  • Wetek Hub (S905)

v4.10

• Meson GX MMC support, including SDIO WLAN
• Meson GXBB USB (host) support
• Meson GXL internal (100Mbit/s) PHY support
• initial support for the GXL (S905D/S905X) and GXM (S912) SoCs
• SCPI support for GXBB
• CPU DVFS (using SCPI)
• Meson GX DRM basics along with CVBS output
• new board support
  • Amlogic P230 (S905D)
  • Amlogic P212 (S905X)
  • Nexbox A95 (S905)
  • Nexbox A1 (S912)

v4.9

• Meson GX Secure Monitor
• Enhanced Meson GXBB Ethernet support
• Meson GX SPIFC support
• Meson GX I2C support
• Meson8b and GX PWM support
• USB host support
• clocks: added AO clocks and reset
• MHU / mailbox support

v4.8

• Meson GXBB Ethernet support
• Meson GXBB Hardware Random Number Generator
• Meson GXBB Watchdog driver
• Meson 8b and GXBB support for the IR remote driver

v4.7

• MesonGXBB pin control support
• earlycon support in serial driver
• Initial device trees for Amlogic reference boards P200 and P201 (S905)
• Initial device tree for Hardkernel ODROID-C2 (S905)

v4.6

• Initial GXBB family support (clocks, serial)
• Initial device trees for Tronsmart Vega S95 (S905)

v4.5

• Meson8b watchdog support / Reboot
• ODROID-C1 status LED support
• Serial driver bugfixes

v4.4

• Initial Meson8b device trees for Hardkernel ODROID-C1 (S805) and Tronfy MXQ (S805)

v4.2

• Clock controller driver added

v4.1

• MINIX NEO X8 board support (M8-S802)
• Meson8b GPIO & pin control driver added

v4.0

• Meson6/Meson8 GPIO & pin control driver added

v3.19

• Core Meson8 support added
• I2C driver added
• SPI flash driver added
• IR remote control driver added
• L2 cache enabled

v3.18

• Core Meson6 support added
• Geniatech ATV1200 board support (AML8726-MX)
• UART driver added
• Watchdog driver added
• Timer/clocksource driver added
• Ethernet controller enabled with glue added to stmmac driver

Download recent cross-toolchain Linaro Latest arm-linux-gnueabihf binaries

To compile the 32-bit mainline kernel:

# make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- multi_v7_defconfig
# make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-linux-gnueabihf- LOADADDR=0x00208000 uImage dtbs

To boot the 32-bit kernel using the shipped U-Boot:

# mmcinfo
# fatload mmc 0:1 0x21000000 uImage
# fatload mmc 0:1 0x22000000 rootfs.cpio.uboot
# fatload mmc 0:1 0x21800000 meson8b-mxq.dtb
# setenv bootargs "console=ttyAML0,115200"
# bootm 0x21000000 0x22000000 0x21800000

Download recent cross-toolchain Linaro Latest aarch64-linux-gnu binaries

To compile the 64-bit mainline kernel:

# make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- defconfig
# make ARCH=arm64 CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- Image dtbs
# mkimage -A arm64 -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x1080000 -e 0x1080000 -n linux-next -d arch/arm64/boot/Image ../uImage

To boot the 64-bit kernel using the shipped U-Boot:

# fatload mmc 0:1 0x01080000 uImage
# fatload mmc 0:1 $dtb_mem_addr meson-gxbb-vega-s95-telos.dtb
# bootm 0x1080000 - $dtb_mem_addr

• ASoC Audio (Jerome Brunet / jbrunet)
• NAND controller driver (Martin Blumenstingl / xdarklight, Yixun Lan / dlan)
• temperature sensors support for the SAR ADC driver (Martin Blumenstingl / xdarklight)
• initial CPU frequency scaling work for Meson8 and Meson8b (Martin Blumenstingl / xdarklight)
• Endless Mini EC-100 device support (Martin Blumenstingl / xdarklight)
  • CPU voltage scaling seems to be implemented with PWM_D: using XTAL as input, a PWM period of 1166ns and inverted duty cycle logic (100% PWM = 0.86V, 0% PWM = 1.14V)
• Video Encoder/​Decoder subsystem support as V4L2 driver (Maxime Jourdan / Elyotna)
  • Endless Mobiles previously has written a V4L2 frontend to Amlogic implementation here
• Meson DRM Features
  • Overlay Planes Support (with scaling) (narmstrong)

• Meson GX System Suspend / Power Management (Neil Armstrong / narmstrong) (last patches)
• Meson8 RTC (Ben Dooks / bjdooks) (last patches)
• convert existing devices to use the PWM LED driver to allow dimming the LEDs (Martin Blumenstingl / xdarklight) (last patches)

• Support more boards (Amlogic based retail products should have PCB holes to enable Serial console with a simple USB to Serial TTL adapter, i.e. Sparkfun USB to Serial TTL cable)
• USB OTG for Meson8/Meson8b/GXBB (dwc2 does not get the OTG interrupts, instead Amlogic's kernel code polls some USB PHY registers to detect the mode. maybe this could be solved by implementing extcon support in the USB2 PHY and dwc2 (based on this RFC))
• USB OTG for GXL/GXM (dwc3 is used for host-mode, dwc2 for device-mode and the second USB2 PHY switches the mode depending on what the USB3 PHY OTG detection logic tells it to) experimental code
• Find a way to cap the SCPI cpufreq max frequency to re-enable DVFS on Odroid-C2
• Meson DRM Features
  • Cursor Plane
  • More formats support for Primary Plane
  • ColorKey as DRM Attribute
  • Primary Plane scaling
  • CRTC Color correction attributes
  • CVBS Color optimizations as attributes
  • LVDS and LCD output support on supported boards
  • Add Display support for pre-GX SoCs
  • Add HDMI support for pre-GX SoCs, Unknown HDMI Controller IP

Amlogic SoCs support is done via full Driver Model support with default boot scheme including EFI boot support.

Mainline U-Boot is limited to be used with Linux 4.16+, where the Power Domain handling has been added.

v2018.07

• Support for GXBB, GXL & GXM SAR ADC
• Device Tree synchronized with 4.16
• Amlogic code cleanup

v2018.05

• Support for GXL & GXM USB Phys and Host Controller
• Support for GXBB, GXL & GXM Reset Controller

v2018.03

• BROKEN Avoid this version, the MMC driver crashes on a division by zero, please stick to v2018.01, the bug has been fixed in v2018.05

v2018.01

• Support for GXL Internal PHY
• Support for I2C Controller
• Support for GXL SoC
• Add BLx memory hole handling as reserved memory for FDT and EFI
• Support for new Boards :
  • Support for P212
  • Support for Khadas VIM
  • Support for LibreTech-CC (Potato)

S905D and S912 Support should be straightforward

Should be easy to port :

• Nanopi K2 board using S905
• Khadas VIM2 using S912

Our main source of information is the open source kernel code and Linux SDK published by Amlogic.

A partial S805 SoC manual and a partial S905 SoC manual has been published by Hardkernel.
A partial S905X SoC manual and a partial S912 SoC manual manual have been published by Khadas (on their docs page)

Based on the Amlogic kernel code, these git trees also contain some interesting developments:

• Endless Mobile S805 kernel
• Hardkernel ODROID-C1 kernel
• Hardkernel ODROID-C2 kernel
• Wetek.Play kernel (out of date?)
• Wetek Play OpenELEC kernel
• Khadas VIM kernel (contains some of Amlogic's git history)

All new developments will ultimately go into the official Linux tree. In the meantime, you can find in-development or ready-to-merge changes in these trees :

• Official arm-soc Amlogic sub-architecture linux integration tree
• Amlogic Meson DRM Display driver linux integration tree
• Amlogic Meson Clock driver linux integration tree

Experimental Test distributions using mainline (maybe outdated) :

• Experimental OpenEmbedded/Yocto Layer
• Experimental LibreElec Support
• Embedded Linux Conference Quake 3 Arena Demo on Odroid-C2
• Armbian Nightly build with Mainline kernel

• Our IRC channel is #linux-amlogic on Freenode
• Mailing list