Linaro 12.05 Release with Kernel 3.4 and Android 4.0.4

Linaro has just released version 12.05 based on Linux Kernel 3.4 and Android 4.0.4.

This release provides lots of improvement for Origen (Samsung Exynos 4) on Android, further work has been done on big.LITTLE processing and ARMv8 work appears to have started for Ubuntu and Debian. armel vs armhf benchmarks show a massive improvement (up to 15x) when using armhf for povray (3D rendering),. but for most other tests, there is little improvement, and in some rare cases armhf is slightly slower than armel.

Here are the highlights of the release:

Android
- Created a stable Google hangout build for Origen
- Updated DS-5 and gator daemon to 5.10
- Stress tests from big.LITTLE testing have been integrated into LAVA
- Completed big.LITTLE Android tasks
- Monkeyrunner tests for automating common Android usage have been integrated into LAVA
- Ordered a new power measurement device from National Instruments
- Updated and Origen 3.4 rc7
- Completed Android HAL upgrades for mainline MM drivers like display, codec and HDMI
- Android Kernel on Origen is now completely in-sync with mainline drivers
- Video playback of H264, MPEG4 1080p@30fps both on both HDMI and LCD on Origen
- Upgraded to the latest and greatest 3D S/W and HAL libraries from MALI on Origen
- Performance improvement is seen on Graphics Benchmark on 0xBenchmark, GlMark2, in the 1205 release will all latest components integrated
- Linaro Android is now compiled with Linaro’s version of gcc 4.7, and with many optional features, such as ISO C++ 11 support, enabled.
- We have also started providing experimental builds of gcc trunk (the version that will at some point become 4.8), and running test builds with it, helping detect problems early.
- All changes needed to get Android to work with the new tools are being submitted to the Android Open Source Project.
Developer Platform
- big.LITTLE ARM Reference/Integrated Switcher developer platform components have been updated to reflect the latest development deliverables.
- Developer Platform now supports A15 Fast Models with a kvm kernel and kvm image.
- Ubuntu Sauce is now published as a topic branch for the Linux Linaro Baseline.
- The Developer Platform Team now provides an image for big.LITTLE testing, with all testing components integrated by default.
- ARMv8 bootstrap plan for Debian and Ubuntu is now published for Linaro.
- Cross Toolchain updated at both Ubuntu Quantal (12.10) and Linaro GCC CI, based on GCC 4.7
- Cross buildd now supports Quantal, also reporting status for the cross build bootstrap required packages.
- Pre-built images are now tested on LAVA on a daily basis, with per image report with the build and tests results.
- Linaro GCC cross package is now produced by a CI loop, built, tested and published automatically at the Ubuntu LEB.
- Snowball is now fully supported at u-boot-linaro, and used as the default boot loader at the Snowball Ubuntu LEB.
- Linaro Sysroots updated reflecting toochain and platform changes for 12.05.
- Linux Linaro 12.05 was released with ARM LT and Samsung LT integrated by default.
Infrastructure
- Jenkins does not spawn infinite ec2 slaves when disk space is low.
- Linaro CI now supports restricted-access builds in order to support our members licensing/business requirements.
- Upcoming work per team is reported on a new status page in Launchpad.
- The code of the license-protection publishing feature is now unit tested, and the testing process has been documented.
Graphics
- Add full cairo-gles2 support for platforms not supporting GL_OES_texture_npot (e.g. SGX and Tegra) by implementing repeat wrap modes in shaders.
- Ideas in Motion scene based upon classic SGI OpenGL demo.
- Allow user configuration of visual used for rendering.
- Rendering to the glmark2 is always opaque for a consistent visual result across platforms and compositing environments.
- Updates to the Util class to make it more useful and clearer to use.
Kernel
- Set and run big.LITTLE Switcher demo at Connect Q2.12.
- Add pin control for ux500 and Snowball.
- Support pin configuration of things like pull-up, pull-down, driving, schmitt-trigger input, slew rate, and other things about pins that software can control on the SoCs we know.
OCTO
- Updated ARM hard float benchmarks results.
Multimedia
- Easy-to-use Audio Validation Suite for Linux.
- Pulse Audio v2 with ucm support
- libjpeg-turbo refresh to 1.2.1+svn829
Power Management
- PM-QA gained thermal testing support (disabled by default)
- Merged additional cpuidle tests
Toolchain
- Linaro Toolchain Binaries, a pre-built version of Linaro GCC and Linaro GDB that runs on generic Linux or Windows and targets the glibc Linaro Evaluation Build.
  - Updates the system root to Ubuntu Precise
  - Switches to the arm-linux-gnueabihf triplet
  - Compiles programs for hard float by default
  - Includes soft float support for ARMv4T and later systems
  - Includes debug symbols for debugging and backtracing the C library
- Linaro QEMU 2012.05 is the latest monthly release of qemu-linaro. Based off upstream (trunk) QEMU, it includes a number of ARM-focused bug fixes and enhancements.
  - Beagle bootrom emulation now correctly handles FAT12/FAT16 images (thanks to Peter Chubb for the bug report and patch).
  - We now support running ARM BE8 userspace binaries (ie byte-invariant big-endian data and little-endian code).
- Linaro GCC 4.7 2012.05 is the second release in the 4.7 series. Based off the latest GCC 4.7.0+svn187448 release, it includes performance improvements especially around 64 bit operations.
  - Updates to GCC 4.7.0+svn187448
  - Uses the new /lib/ld-linux-armhf.so.3 loader for hard float binaries
  - Adds support for negating 64 bit values in NEON
  - Improves loading of 64 bit immediate values in NEON
Validation
- LAVA master images can be constructed automatically in a reproducible way.

Here are the known issues for this release:

Linaro Android:
- ADB over USB doesn’t work on i.MX53
- Snowball: Hang when DUT goes to suspend, (USB OTG port is free – no cables connected)
- Adb on panda and staging-panda hangs when device goes to suspend mode
- Android tracking-panda build 9+ re-enters suspend immediately after resume
- iMX53 10.11 build 3 hangs after mmc0: card 1234 removed dmesg
- DVI out port is not working with staging-panda or tracking-panda
- Pandaboard goes into reboot loop with kernel 3.1.1.
- Snowball: Bootup failures observed due to sd card corruption (ICS )
- BT doesn’t work on ICS on Panda
- iMX53: Hang observed frequently during bootup when USB keyboard/mouse connected to board
- Resume fails on panda builds
- vexpress-a9: ICS: Suspend-Resume doesn’t work
- Panda: Resume failing on tracking-panda build
- Tracking-Panda: Kernel Panic observed on blank screen (after 10-15 minutes idle): Debug assertion failed! [684, drivers/gpu/pvr/sgx/sgxutils.c]
- Intermittent: cg2900 fails to start
- Panda :Display fails to come up(on HDMI out) sometimes after flashing and bootup sequence
- Resume fails on Snowball
- Switch to OpenJDK (Sun JDK not part of distributions anymore)
- Wifi does not always work on Samsung Origen
- Can’t change Gator counter configuration
- Origen: tracking-origen build fails to boot up
- Monkeyrunner fails to run on fastmodels
- Snowball kernel fails to build with gcc 4.7
- Errors about syste monkeyrunner test scripts
- Performance of android with 3.4 kernel on fastmodel is bad
- Panda: Continous “System UI has stopped” messages on main UI on setting wallpaper.
- Surfaceflinger takes more that 50% of the CPU usage on the latest Android builds
Linaro Ubuntu:
- [mx51evk] root not found and boot failed to initramfs shell
- MMC doesn’t work at IGEPv2 with linux-linaro-omap
- Unfinished work items for cross Buildable Nano PPA, Natty based
- HW graphics acceleration does not work on Origen with Ubuntu LEB
- Origen: device tree not enabled at Ubuntu
- Quickstart oneiric totem video playback is very poor: lack of hw video decoder
- imx53/imx6 compiz fails to run: lack of gles drivers
- [regression] No DVI output on the PandaBoard with kernel 3.1.0-1402-linaro-lt-omap
- [regression] desktop performance at quickstart is a lot worse with 11.11
- 11.12 Sound does not work on imx53
- Panda: only low resolution on 1080p plasma
- Audio jack input and output not working on Panda
- Can’t install multiple linux-header packages
- Origen: HDMI Audio not working
- Request lttng test case to be included at the lava daily tests
- IMX6: invalid default mac address for the ethernet interface
- OpenGL ES based applications crash at Snowball when running with X11
- Enable more kernel features in Linaro kernels?
- iMX6: sound doesn’t work after a reboot
- Pandaboard fails to boot with LT 3.3 based kernel with SCHED_MC on
- Panda: suspend resume fails

Go to https://wiki.linaro.org/Cycles/1205/Release for further release details about the LEB, Android, Kernel, Graphics, Landing Team, Platform, Power management and Toolchain (GCC / Qemu) components.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.