lucie lukas "minute" hartmanncool, unblobbing of RK3588 boot is in progress: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2024/02/21/almost-a-fully-open-source-boot-chain-for-rockchips-rk3588/
kosmosghost@mntmn I still dont get it. As someone who wants an RK3588 pinephone, how does this change thingd? From what I understand rockchip builds arm cpus tailored to the linux kernel, and the linux kernel is gpl, so how can there be closed source blobs? Im not asking out of arrogance, instead im asking out of a potent blend of curiousity and stupidity.
@kosmosghost the blobs are not part of linux at all, they are part of the bootloader. the chip, when turning on, loads the bootloader from a boot medium (like sd card or flash). this also contains some code to train the ddr memory, for example. this code is often proprietary firmware. after all this is done, the bootloader loads the linux kernel. the kernel does not contain blobs.
@mntmn thanks. This helps a lot. I think I need to learn more about bootloaders and hardware for me to actually grasp what you said though.
@kosmosghost on arm platforms, the relevant projects are "arm trusted firmware" and "u-boot".
Niklaus 'vimja' Hofer@mntmn
This is so cool. It increases the attractiveness of an rk3588 module even further.
This is so cool. It increases the attractiveness of an rk3588 module even further.