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| Release Notes for Linux on Intel's IXP2000 Network Processor | |
| Maintained by Deepak Saxena <dsaxena@plexity.net> | |
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| 1. Overview | |
| Intel's IXP2000 family of NPUs (IXP2400, IXP2800, IXP2850) is designed | |
| for high-performance network applications such high-availability | |
| telecom systems. In addition to an XScale core, it contains up to 8 | |
| "MicroEngines" that run special code, several high-end networking | |
| interfaces (UTOPIA, SPI, etc), a PCI host bridge, one serial port, | |
| flash interface, and some other odds and ends. For more information, see: | |
| http://developer.intel.com | |
| 2. Linux Support | |
| Linux currently supports the following features on the IXP2000 NPUs: | |
| - On-chip serial | |
| - PCI | |
| - Flash (MTD/JFFS2) | |
| - I2C through GPIO | |
| - Timers (watchdog, OS) | |
| That is about all we can support under Linux ATM b/c the core networking | |
| components of the chip are accessed via Intel's closed source SDK. | |
| Please contact Intel directly on issues with using those. There is | |
| also a mailing list run by some folks at Princeton University that might | |
| be of help: https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/ixp2xxx | |
| WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT POST EMAIL TO THE LINUX-ARM OR LINUX-ARM-KERNEL | |
| MAILING LISTS REGARDING THE INTEL SDK. | |
| 3. Supported Platforms | |
| - Intel IXDP2400 Reference Platform | |
| - Intel IXDP2800 Reference Platform | |
| - Intel IXDP2401 Reference Platform | |
| - Intel IXDP2801 Reference Platform | |
| - RadiSys ENP-2611 | |
| 4. Usage Notes | |
| - The IXP2000 platforms usually have rather complex PCI bus topologies | |
| with large memory space requirements. In addition, b/c of the way the | |
| Intel SDK is designed, devices are enumerated in a very specific | |
| way. B/c of this this, we use "pci=firmware" option in the kernel | |
| command line so that we do not re-enumerate the bus. | |
| - IXDP2x01 systems have variable clock tick rates that we cannot determine | |
| via HW registers. The "ixdp2x01_clk=XXX" cmd line options allow you | |
| to pass the clock rate to the board port. | |
| 5. Thanks | |
| The IXP2000 work has been funded by Intel Corp. and MontaVista Software, Inc. | |
| The following people have contributed patches/comments/etc: | |
| Naeem F. Afzal | |
| Lennert Buytenhek | |
| Jeffrey Daly | |
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| Last Update: 8/09/2004 |