TSC Meeting Notes 2023 - OpenAMP/open-amp GitHub Wiki
- Tomas, Bruce, Gokhan, Dan, Loic, Jiafei, Arnaud, Hari, Nathalie, Bill Mills, Tammy
- Updates:
- Nathalie: Website Governance page updated
- Bill: October release
- Bill: AMP Virtio work
- Tomas: Linaro member meeting
- Anything interesting from Linux Plumbers?
- Tomas: RISC-V and RISE
- Discussion: Documentation - could engaging a contractor make sense?
- OpenAMP Governance on webpage now reflects what we actually do
- October release of libraries & meta-open-amp is done, but some items remain (demo images, docs)
- AMP Virtio work is continuing
- OpenAMP has a lot of potential benefit to other projects if we can get them to adopt it
- RISC-V: Would like them not to invent their own version of how to do AMP. The TSC participants who went to RISC-V Summit unfortunately weren't able to join the call
- Docs:
- It might be useful to hire a professional tech writer contractor to try out & improve the docs further. No one was against the idea, but there are open questions. --> Spin up a small working group to discuss what RFP could look like (Bill, Tammy, Arnaud, Nathalie, Tomas + will ask Ed, Felipe & Arm guy)
- Who are we trying to attract? Want to get OpenAMP running on new architectures & new operating systems
- Another candidate for how to use budget:
- Libmetal is big & over-designed for RTOS-only. Would be good to keep what Linux user space needs, but have compile time flag to trim it down.
- Bill: Wrote an outline as an issue in libmetal for Compile-flag effort https://github.com/OpenAMP/libmetal/issues/278
- Arnaud: Reach out to Felipe about if he has feedback on the OpenAMP docs
- Gokhan: Reach out to manager about new team member who might be a candidate to give feedback on the docs
- Nathalie: Schedule call with Bill, Tammy, Arnaud, Nathalie, Tomas & Ed about coming up with RFP for docs contractor
- Had some folks missing from the accepts list
- Updates:
- Nathalie: Governance page: At Linaro Connect, Arnaud, Bill & Nathalie made updates so that it reflects what we actually do
- Bill: Did the October release of the libraries & meta-open-amp. Rest of the project is trickling through (demo images, putting tag on docs)
- AMP Virtio work is continuing, including normal Virtio as RTOS library. -> Zephyr as guest w/ virtio devices
- Tomas: Linaro member meeting 2 weeks ago talked about HPP/OpenAMP System Reference
- AMD thinks important to make things plug together - open source + proprietary
- Folks see lots of promise, but looking for proof (e.g. connect w/ SOAFEE, Xen using OpenAMP to connect multiple instances of Xen)
- Trying to push OpenAMP into other projects
- Linux Plumbers:
- Unfortunately, Bruce and Tanmay had to leave before the System DT on the final day
- Tomas: RISC-V
- Are there others interested in OpenAMP on RISC-V?
- AMD has just released Microblaze-V
- AMD has joined RISE (similar to Linaro for RISC-V)
- RISE moves a bit slower than Linaro (lower cost to join, so have less staff support than Linaro)
- Documentation
- Tammy & System Reference team made big improvements
- Proposal for hiring a contractor to try out & improve the docs further
- Bill: Michael from Bootlin does a lot of tech writing for Yocto Project & is main editor for man pages for Linux Kernel & glibc. Bootlin probably cares about OpenAMP & would be good way to get Bootlin involved in project.
- Tomas: Hoping to get more boards into System Reference, and put it into other projects so that it's more pervasive
- Gokhan: We need to get new platform on & have collab on Cassini project w/ Linaro in 2024. Will be looking at OpenAMP more in 2024.
- Arnaud: Maybe we could have a survey to collect feedback & comments. How to reach folks who aren't on the mailing lists - maybe via GitHub? (chicken & egg problem)
- Jiafei: Technical docs written by developer. Would be good to have professional author.
- Arnaud: e.g. Architecture overview to have global view before digging into the code?
- Jiafei: Need basic arch info in document & maybe pro author can provide re-wording to make more readable & help maintain website
- Tomas: If we hire someone, what do we actually ask them to do? If they're really good, we can give loose bounds "help new user get the big picture & then get started". I'm thinking reducing starting cost for a new user.
- Nathalie: For arch docs, need something that covers the gap between the elevator pitch deck and the technical docs
- Tomas: How to move forward? Wait for Arm & others to dig in first?
- Gokhan: Don't wait for us, in case roadmaps change.
- Bill: Should figure out size of engagement - content or size. We know how much money we have & could look at how many hours that could buy us and is it worth it? How many hours of work do we think it will take?
- Nathalie: Also have the board sub-working group to look into if OpenAMP sponsors a conference
- Tomas: Summary - no one is against it, but there are questions around scope & content & how much we can spend & if that is enough to do something meaningful.
- Bill: 8 weeks, 40h/week, $150/h -> $48K for docs seems a lot. 5yrs ago, YP had a person half-time on the project for $100K, but YP has way more docs & components.
- Tammy: Are we also thinking porting? Is $200/h the going rate?
- Bill: Could split into cleanup operation + 12 mo retainer. Think it's between $100-$200/h
- Tomas: Who are we trying to attract? Want to get OpenAMP running on new architectures & new operating systems
- Bill: RP call last week
- Libmetal is big & over-designed for RTOS-only. Would be good to keep what Linux user space needs, but have compile time flag to trim it down. Could be a constrained enough job that it's something a contractor could look into. That would likely be $40-50K range.
- Tomas: Agree that part of the attraction is that OpenAMP is small & baremetal use case
- Nathalie: Need to save $ for compute & storage as CI ramps
- Bill: Backlog of ~$60K for one-time projects vs. the yearly income from members for ongoing
- Tomas: Need something like a request for proposal (e.g. what could we get for $30K).
- Bill: Wrote an outline as an issue in libmetal for Compile-flag effort https://github.com/OpenAMP/libmetal/issues/278
- Tomas: Who can volunteer for docs RFP scoping?
- Bill, TAmmy, Arnaud, Nathalie, Tomas
- Nathalie: Should reach out to Ed b/c was a tech writer in past life
- Arnaud: Can reach out to Felipe
- Gokhan: Have new team member who might be good - need to ask permission from his manager before volunteering him
- Tanmay, Tammy, Tomas, Nathalie, Hari, Ed, Dan, Bill, Loic, Bruce, Nishanth, Stefano
- Latest from working groups
- OpenAMP RP
- System Reference
- Latest on Virtio proposal
- Linaro Connect in April:
- OpenAMP BOF proposal
- Maybe Tue afternoon/evening OpenAMP meeting
- Latest from working groups, cont.
- System DT (Stefano had a call conflict for 1st half)
- Maintainership of OpenAMP library
- Virtio proposal to Linaro & LEDGE
- Call scheduling across time zones
- Most of the work from App-services working group has been redirected to System Reference working group
- Virtio unification will be an important topic this year
- System DT documentation has been refactored and looks more official as a spec
- OpenAMP documentation is in much better shape for onboarding new participants, so could make sense to revisit the contractor topic
- Beneficial if any new joiners to OpenAMP could give feedback on how to improve the docs
- Tomas to revisit topic of OpenAMP maintainership w/ Xilinx management
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Recording link
- Passcode: #D%a5Kz=
- Bill: OpenAMP RP update
- Kernel upstreaming of Xilinx stuff is progressing well
- Discussing RPMsg over other types of transports besides virtio
- ST has done in past
- Xilinx interested in mailbox
- Bill suggests to create a design document. There is some code/patches already. This could be start of an RPMsg formal spec.
- Concerned that there are a bunch of partial RPMsg implementations
- Tomas: Have been talking about OpenAMP over PCIe in past. Anything new on that?
- Bill:
- Would want to do in virtio unification, but that would be RPMsg over virtio-mmio. RPMsg over UART, SPI, or direct mailbox is a bit different
- Would be good for OpenAMP to make a rule that we engage on technologies where there is an open source reference implementation on both halves of the conversation (e.g. Don't want to get into situation like Qualcomm G-link, which (I think) is open on kernel side, but not on firmware side)
- Tomas: Agree, can have commercial implementations, but also want open source for a given board
- Tomas: Think virtio unification will be important to this group, don't want to do stuff that will make it harder to unify
- Bill: Feature advancement will largely be focused on virtio unification
- Tomas: Maybe more boards (system reference)
- Nathalie: System Reference update
- Webinar in December went well. Got some good questions. Docs & demos are posted.
- Discord channel invitation link was posted, but has not been very active
- Will make a blog post to OpenAMP website with pointers to the resources
- Tomas: Exposed some things that we need to clean up & make easier wrt Yocto. Would be wonderful to get more than ST & Xilinx boards. Would be great to get TI & NXP boards in the system reference to show the breadth of OpenAMP.
- Tomas: Higher level services working group?
- Dan: Most of the work from app-services has been redirected to System Reference, where we have prototyped & aggregated the high level services code contributions, demos. Expect this to continue in near future.
- Tomas: The work WR did is really showing the possibilities. Good to show using things upstream & connected to Virtio proposal.
- Dan: Some 2023 plans may fall outside of System Reference WG. Plan to add additional virtio device support. If it doesn't turn into a demo, app services WG would be place for 9p, etc. Have considered publishing SDK w/ commercial binary image to show another runtime instead of Zephyr, still under discussion at WR. Would target ZCU102.
- Tomas: Think this is exciting to show this is more than Zephyr & Linux. If there's something similar we could do w/ Siemens Nucleus, would be great.
- Tammy: We haven't discussed related to OpenAMP, but have done demos for tradeshows & customers w/ Nucleus. Might be neat to show Zephyr-Nucleus & FreeRTOS-Nucleus to show different RTOSes in different combos. Have some stuff running on iMX.8 .
- Tomas: Good thing about open standards is that it is also applicable to commercial
- Linaro Connect in April
- Bill will send out BOF proposal draft (will request 40 min slot)
- Quick intro, Description of what we did in seminar & pointers to it (15 min)
- Rest of slot as open discussion
- Demos at Connect is still up in the air (not Friday afternoon as was historically done). Potentially would want to show Docker demo & 1-2 HW platforms. Otherwise can do the demo in the BOF.
- Tomas: We should prepare some Qs for discussion, just in case.
- Tue afternoon/evening F2F
- We will plan once we know who has talks accepted
- Would be good to try to organize hybrid
- TBD if members meeting will overlap
- Loic: Could be good to help us align on some technical points F2F.
- Bill will be arriving Monday & available Tue for meetings
- Loic & Eric arriving Monday. Proposing for Arnaud to join at same time. Could also be good if Mathieu is there.
- Bill will request Mathieu to arrive earlier (or he might be tied up with Members Meeting)
- TI trying to work out final list of who will be going
- Bill will send out BOF proposal draft (will request 40 min slot)
- Maintainership of OpenAMP library
- In past had Wendy & Ed on OpenAMP library & Ed is retired & not as active as maintainer
- Would like some help from another company b/c Arnaud would like time to work on kernel too
- Arnaud also has the ST view & would be good to have another maintainer with different use case perspective
- Tomas to revisit topic of OpenAMP maintainership w/ Xilinx management
- How much time per month? Sometimes Arnaud spends 30-40% time, which is high & challenge w/ ST new development activities. => maybe 15% if we have 2 maintainers
- Also good when maintainer is on vacation to have an alternate
- Ed: Would say minimum 8h/week to keep infrastructure rolling. Need to also keep an eye on LKML in case anything there affects the library.
- Loic: Agree it's important to have view on kernel & understand development on both sides
- Stefano: System DT WG update
- Marti from Nordic Semi contributed patches to Lopper for Zephyr
- Documentation refactored and looks more official as a spec (system DT subdir of lopper) - can call make & generate PDF
- Will talk about it at next System DT call next week
- System DT & Lopper came up in SOAFEE context (Automotive topics). Arm is SOAFEE steward.
- Hypervisor topics: Generic way to assign resources to VMs. Lopper came up as main tool to be able to generate the description of the DT for assigned devices.
- Discussions around how to evolve virtio spec in a more embedded/automotive/safety direction. Discussions around Xen hypervisor in last 6 mo.
- Virtio support for Xen on Arm patches to QEMU list
- Address filtering for additional safety protection on top of virtio
- Bruce working on Yocto integration & working w/ someone on dtc. Working on lookup by ranges in memory. Looking at JSON for secondary info wrt memory. Building block work to add new features in next few months.
- Virtio proposal to Linaro & LEDGE
- We created slide deck & presented to Linaro TSC
- Bill has enhanced to add more automotive context
- Would like to be able to use with A+M, A+R, or between hypervisor guests (specifically in hypervisors configured to be super lightweight & RTOS)
- Dan & WR hypervisorless virtio work fits in & want to take next steps on this
- https://drive.google.com/file/d/198kbwHojBHeM8QFnmSJd7dz5FLCpXPM9/view?usp=share_link
- We created slide deck & presented to Linaro TSC
- 6am or 7am Pacific / 10pm or 11pm China time to get China, Pacific, and Europe
- It gets better in spring with Daylight Savings
- Nathalie & Tomas to find out which topics they would be interested in
- Loic: Can ask ChatGPT to propose times that will work ;)
- Tomas: If anyone has contract work ideas to help us get things moving
- Nathalie: Previously had needed docs in better shape so that a contractor could onboard efficiently
- Tomas: Big thanks to Tammy, the docs look much better now.
- Tammy: Coming in with OpenAMP newbie perspective I hit all the pain points, so know what a new person coming to OpenAMP might have on their mind. Additional future improvements that could help:
- Explanation of how OpenAMP works
- Discussion on the different types of IPC drivers & using SW interrupts could be helpful for someone to understand
- Tomas: Would be good to ask as a standing topic those newly joining the project to take a look at the docs & give feedback on what to improve.