2020.11.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom Unleashed SDK and thus is experimental at this stage. Main changes include:

• kernel updated to v5.8.18 and additional fixes applied on top:

  • [PATCH v4 1/1] i2c: ocores: fix polling mode workaround on FU540-C000 SoC
    https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-riscv/2020-October/002512.html

  • [PATCH] irqchip/sifive-plic: Fix broken irq_set_affinity() callback
    https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-riscv/2020-October/002498.html

  • [RFC PATCH] irqchip/sifive-plic: Fix getting wrong chip_data when interrupt is hierarchy
    https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-riscv/2020-October/002634.html

• stress-ng updated to 0.11.23.

• GDB updated to 10.1 (incl. gdbserver support for riscv64).

• x86_64 was added back for QEMU targets (needed for native SDK builds).

• Added all built Perl modules (perl-modules package).

• Man (Manual) pages are now working properly (man-pages and man-db packages were added).

• GNU TLS and OpenSSL utilities are installed (gnutls-bin and openssl-bin packages were added).

• wireless-regdb regulatory database was added for WiFi.

• LLVM/Clang 11 packages are now included in all the disk images:

  • clang

  • clang-dev

  • clang-libllvm

  • clang-staticdev

  • libclang

  • compiler-rt

  • compiler-rt-dev

  • compiler-rt-staticdev

  • ldd

  • libcxx

  • libcxx-dev

  • libcxx-staticdev

  • openmp

• Clang is now included into native SDK builds.

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

2020.10.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom Unleashed SDK and thus is experimental at this stage. Main changes include:

• All layers (openembedded-core, meta-openembedded, meta-riscv) updated to their latest revisions.

• stress-ng updated to 0.11.21.

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

2020.09.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom Unleashed SDK and thus is experimental at this stage. Main changes include:

• All layers (openembedded-core, meta-openembedded, meta-riscv) updated to their latest revisions.

• Kernel updated to v5.8.2.

• stress-ng updated to 0.11.19.

• nfs-server was removed.

• udev-extraconf was added for additional udev rules to allow external storage to be mounted automatically.

• dhcp-client was replaced by dhcpd.

• Fix support for FAT file system formatted partitions/drives.

• Add support for exFAT file system.

• OpenSBI is now compiled in FW_DYNAMIC variant for generic plaform instead of FW_PAYLOAD and sifive/fu540 platform.

• Removed support for OpenSBI payload (RISCV_SBI_PAYLOAD variable).

• freedom-u540-c000-bootloader was removed (replaced by U-Boot SPL).

• Kernel image was switched to Image.gz (gzip compressed Image) and thus removed the need for U-Boot FIT image. Image kernel target contains 64-byte header with details required by bootloaders.

• virtual/bootloader virtual target pointing to u-boot was added.

• rootfs tarball was added (e.g. could be used with NFS).

• Switch compression for disk images to XZ.

• Updated /etc/fstab is now updated in the final rootfs (allows to mount /boot from a separate partition).

• DTB is deployed and loaded from /boot partition.

• Added EXTLINUX support.

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

2020.08.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom Unleashed SDK and thus is experimental at this stage. Main changes include:

• All layers (openembedded-core, meta-openembedded, meta-riscv) updated to their latest revisions.

• Kernel updated to v5.8.

• stress-ng updated to 0.11.17.

• hdparm package was added.

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

2020.07.00

This release includes major changes compared previous Freedom Unleashed SDK and thus is experimental at this stage. Main changes include:

• All layers (openembedded-core, meta-openembedded, meta-riscv) updated to their latest revisions.

• Kernel updated to v5.7.4.

• U-Boot updated to v2020.07-rc5.

• OpenSBI updated to v0.8.

• stress-ng updated to 0.11.14.

• Mesa updated to 20.0.3.

• jq package was added.

• LLVM updated to a newer revision (not final 10.0.1).

• Backport 3 vDSO fixes from upstream.

• Updated kernel configuration to incl. more I2C related features (/dev/i2c-0 exist and i2cdetect detects it).

• haveged updated to 1.9.13 (solves cyclic dependency issue with systemd at boot time).

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

2020.06.00

• All layers (openembedded-core, meta-openembedded, meta-riscv) updated to their latest revisions.
• Kernel updated to v5.7.2.
• U-Boot updated to v2020.07-rc4.
• GCC update to 10.1.0.

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

2020.05.00

• All layers (openembedded-core, meta-openembedded, meta-riscv) updated to their latest revisions
• Kernel updated to v5.6.12.
• U-Boot updated to v2020.04.
• Notable new packages added: dtc and pcimem.
• openembedded-core now requires GCC 6 or higher on the host system. README has been updated with information on how to install the official openembedded-core build tools or build your own. Pre-built build tools from the same release source are also attached in the assets below.

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

2020.04.00

• All layers (openembedded-core, meta-openembedded, meta-riscv) updated to their latest revisions
• Kernel updated to v5.6.2
• GCC updated to 9.3.0
• Added back 3 packages removed in 2020.03.00 due to Python 3 migration (two Xfce4 packages and fio)
• ATI drivers updated (for HD6450 and similar GPUs)
• AMD drivers added (tested with RX550 and RX570, POLARIS GPUs)
• Glamor (2D acceleration using GPU) enabled (tested with HD6450 and RX550, no artifacts)
• Wayland distribution feature disabled as we use X11
• LLVM updated to 10.0.0 (final release, only used by Mesa for GPUs)
• Mesa updated to 20.0.3
• Vulkan enabled for AMD GPUs (tested with RX550)
• spidev driver enabled
• Disk images no more include debug packages by default and thus there is less to download
• Separate disk image with debug packages can be built by adding -debug prefix to the build target (e.g. demo-coreip-cli-debug or demo-coreip-xfce4-debug)
• Notable new packages added: libgpiod, libgpiod-tools, libgpiod-dev, i2c-tools, spitools, glibc-utils, libgomp-dev.

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SoC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

2020.03.00

• Major software & firmware components updated to the newer versions:

  • kernel v5.5.7

  • U-Boot v2020.01

  • OpenSBI v0.6

  • GCC 9.2.0

  • binutils 2.34.0

  • glibc 2.31

  • GDB 9.1

  • Python 3.8.1

• Full L2 cache (2MiB) is enabled (done within FSBL)

• Support for PWM LEDS (D1, D2, D3, D4) for HiFive Unleashed (configured by udev rules)

  • D1: heartbeat

  • D2: SPI-NOR Flash I/O activity

  • D3: Network activity (eth0)

  • D4: uSD/MMC I/O activity

• Added GPIO driver

  • incl. gpio-restart which enables to reboot the system from the user space

• Enable SPI-NOR Flash as MTB block device

• Allow checking for number of L2 ways enabled via sysfs

• I2C is now built-in instead of being loadable module

• Root account password is now "sifive"

Known Issues

1. Avoid overclocking SOC using CPUFreq if you are using HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board from Microsemi as this will hang the board. Hard reset will be required.

2. If Xfce4 desktop disk image is used with HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board and GPU then rebooting is required after the 1st boot.

NVDLA Demo release

This release supports HiFive Unleashed board with VCU118 FPGA for NVDLA yolov3 demo.

Required packages:

$ apt install git make build-essential file wget cpio python unzip bc \
libssl-dev bison flex linux-firmware device-tree-compiler dosfstools

Build instructions:

$ git clone --recursive -b nvdla-demo-0.1 https://github.com/sifive/freedom-u-sdk.git
$ cd freedom-u-sdk
$ make -j$(nproc)
$ sudo make DISK=/dev/xxx format-nvdla-root

The filesystem image provides yolov3 darknet & nvdla runtime library source codes and build environment.

MD5 checksum of filesystem image is:
c1d0bb0004f09c20fba4740c4bde0652 debian_nvdla_20190506.tar.xz