Development issues regarding the cerowrt test router project
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* Re: [Cerowrt-devel] So how far behind is the embedded router world,still?
@ 2018-07-26 13:13 dpreed
  2018-07-26 13:56 ` [Cerowrt-devel] So how far behind is the embedded router world, still? Mikael Abrahamsson
  2018-07-26 16:45 ` valdis.kletnieks
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: dpreed @ 2018-07-26 13:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Mikael Abrahamsson; +Cc: Dave Taht, cerowrt-devel

Embedded Linux is still a mess.

I've been putting some serious (hacking) effort into RISC-V, using the near desktop class HiFive Unleashed board. The vendor (SiFive) and the RISC-V guys use buildroot! There is a coreboot project, but nothing for the actual hardware exists... Just a lashup for a qemu emulator of a vanilla system.

No reason for lede really ... There is no standard network adapter for its bus other than a GigE device.

But this got me thinking about lede, Android, Yocto, Linaro. What a godawful mess this world that *Linus doesn't care about* is in.

Now the Linux kernel is OK. It can be made simple. But from the call to init() onwards, Linux and BSD just suck. Baling wire and chewing gum. Even initramfs is unmaintanable between releases.

Part of this is package mania. Nothing is shrink wrapped. Everything needs re testing, by every vendor, every time. And it usually breaks.

Part of this is binaries tied to a particular instance of hardware. Blobs. Why do they exist? To divide the OEMs among themselves and waste time and effort, mostly. They do reduce the cost of supporting driver tweakers who don't understand how the hardware works, or build support that makes the vendor unable to improve it's product, but maybe there's a better way ... Create an Open Source Community?

And then there are the buses/controllers. I blame Linux for blessing PCI .. an overcomplex and downright weird Wintel abortion. With patents all over the place, meaning one can't clone it without creating sales for Intel processors.

But Linux's original sin is that it was created solely for x86 environment. Yeah people have pushed it, but design decisions in the IO world around it have followed the path of least resistance. That is, letting Intel Corporation (with its buddy AMD) control Linux design and implementation.

Is it time for a new OS framework that can solve the embedded industry's problems of huge waste and obsolescence? Not black sheep Linaro. They get little respect. Outside the Linux Foundation's Party Secretariat's dominance.

RISC-V suggests to me that an open hardware world can be better than Intel-world. The proposed interconnect, called TileLink, exists, and has a simple working version on the board I'm playing with. It is scalable and flexible like modern PCI, but has no lock-in and legacy. The ISA is, of course, clean and extensible.

So can an industrial strength OS, not based on the Linux spaghetti, be made to replace Linux. Its network stack would be Internet v6 (v4 optional) and it would have IO done in isolated address spaces, communicating via mapped pages with devices and other processes. It would have the ability to launch POSIX processes, but keep all that out of the kernel address space, so you could just avoid all that on devices like storage and network appliances and IoT.

Maybe one could even start with a Linux kernel, but only that. Init() would be entirely different, and only a subset would be used. The ABI would be extended for simpler user space coding of device, network, ... logic that directly operates the hardware and presents simple queue based (rings?) IPC.

Why not now?



-----Original Message-----
From: "Mikael Abrahamsson" <swmike@swm.pp.se>
Sent: Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 4:53 am
To: "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com>
Cc: "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com>, cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
Subject: Re: [Cerowrt-devel] So how far behind is the embedded router world,still?

On Wed, 25 Jul 2018, Dave Taht wrote:

> There are still a few companies alive in this space (openrg being one 
> that I know nothing about), but...

There is no single answer to this. Lots of the home routing SoC space is 
now converging on 4.4, but BCM decided to go for 4.1. They came from 3.2, 
3.4 and perhaps 3.10. When I talk to staff at SoC vendors, they seem to 
live in a world where you take a linux kernel that's announced as LTS (in 
the best of worlds), work on that for 1-2 years during which you release 
an SDK, which then the device manufacturers will take and start putting 
their solutions on, which takes another 1-2 years before it reaches 
customers. So already there is significant latency.

This doesn't mean there are not devices out there today, newly installed, 
that have really ancient kernels (as you have discovered). This is 
especially true for cheaper and simpler devices that are very cost 
optimized.

There is movement in the right direction, but revving kernels on older 
platforms is still hard, as in all of IoT space, due to lack of revenue 
from older platforms. Main model is still to sell a device and then there 
is no further income, so no money to continously develop the device.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike@swm.pp.se
_______________________________________________
Cerowrt-devel mailing list
Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* Re: [Cerowrt-devel] So how far behind is the embedded router world, still?
@ 2018-07-27 12:18 dpreed
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: dpreed @ 2018-07-27 12:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Joel Wirāmu Pauling; +Cc: Dave Taht, Jonathan Morton, cerowrt-devel

In some ways, the quickness is good, beats the old days of ATT monopoly never innovating except over 10 year incremental cycles.

But Linux isn't capable of quick innovation. It's too overcomplicated. Too many parts barely fit together, or don't. Huge config files encoding same info in inconsistent ways. Poor cross compilation architecture, if there is one at all. Days long build cycles.

Then throw in UEFI which has to be built on Windows to get it right.

Not a system that can chase innovation of the small kind. Hardware is now like software in how varied it can be. But software is no longer about flexibility of abstraction. Every Linux is a Time Sharing System.


-----Original Message-----
From: "Joel Wirāmu Pauling" <joel@aenertia.net>
Sent: Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 4:34 pm
To: "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com>
Cc: "Dave Taht" <dave.taht@gmail.com>, "Jonathan Morton" <chromatix99@gmail.com>, cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
Subject: Re: [Cerowrt-devel] So how far behind is the embedded router world, still?

Just a note - a lot of this mess is due to China's rapid dev cycles and
race to the bottom on cost vs supply.

Generally a fab house who is in turn contracted by an OEM in China will
have 1 maybe 2 engineers who will do the initial low level C bits required
for a product/board. They get it working on whatever build environment they
have at hand and chuck it over the fence to product unit who ship it. Then
moving onto the next contract never to be seen from again.


-Joel


On 27 July 2018 at 08:15, Dave Taht  wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 9:48 AM dpreed@deepplum.com 
> wrote:
> >
> > How would one get Linux Foundation to raise money to sponsor a router
> software initiative?
>
> We tried. Personally, having bled out mentally and financially more
> than once, I am not up to trying again. They don't return our calls
> anymore.
>
> > I can see that all the current network product OEMs might mass up to
> kill it or make it fail. Kind of like coreboot vs. UEFI.
> >
> > But maybe Facebook or Amazon or Google - dedicated white-box fan
> companies - might do it. Or maybe there's a Chinese funding source.
>
> Well, try to sort through
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnycouncil/2018/07/26/
> why-you-should-start-looking-at-googles-flutter-and-
> fuchsia-now/#795943a6a309
>
> As for china, sure, that would be great. Europe, sure. I think china
> has a huge incentive to get into making better firmware in
> collaboration with europe. As for america...
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: "Jonathan Morton" 
> > Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2018 10:13am
> > To: "Mikael Abrahamsson" 
> > Cc: cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > Subject: Re: [Cerowrt-devel] So how fHow wouar behind is the embedded
> router world, still?
> >
> > > On 26 Jul, 2018, at 11:53 am, Mikael Abrahamsson 
> wrote:
> > >
> > > they seem to live in a world where you take a linux kernel that's
> announced as LTS (in the best of worlds), work on that for 1-2 years during
> which you release an SDK, which then the device manufacturers will take and
> start putting their solutions on, which takes another 1-2 years before it
> reaches customers.
> >
> > This in itself sounds like a colossal waste of developer man-hours.
> Which really just serves to underline how clueless CPE vendors are - about
> their core business, no less.
> >
> > They obviously have a lot more resources than we do.  What could *we* do
> with that level of funding and organisation?  Take six months, and put out
> a router that *doesn't* suck for a change!
> >
> >  - Jonathan Morton
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> > Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> > Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
>
>
>
> --
>
> Dave Täht
> CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> http://www.teklibre.com
> Tel: 1-669-226-2619
> _______________________________________________
> Cerowrt-devel mailing list
> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel
>



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
* [Cerowrt-devel] So how far behind is the embedded router world, still?
@ 2018-07-25 18:50 Dave Taht
  2018-07-25 19:14 ` valdis.kletnieks
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 15+ messages in thread
From: Dave Taht @ 2018-07-25 18:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: cerowrt-devel

back in 2011, 2012 jim and I and others looked hard at the kernels and
software being sold then to end-users.

We concluded that the embedded router world was running 5-7 years
behind linux mainline, sometimes as much as 10, and that the embedded
linux world had been decimated by the great recession causing the
collapse of companies like montavista.

I recently took apart verizon FIOS's current firmware for one of their
more popular routers. It's still running 2.6.21, which shipped in
june, 2007. Overgeneralizing from this one data point, I am wondering
if the trendline for new routing products tracking current software
has got worse or better? I have generally assumed that "new wifi
features" was a fundamental driver for semi-newer kernel versions in
new products, and not much else. Edgerouters are still 3.10. I know of
more than a few pre-bufferbloat-era things going back even further
than that, but most hackerboards I've played with also don't go back
very far. Odroid C2 was still 3.10 last I looked.

There are still a few companies alive in this space (openrg being one
that I know nothing about), but...

-- 

Dave Täht
CEO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-669-226-2619

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 15+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2018-07-27 12:18 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 15+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2018-07-26 13:13 [Cerowrt-devel] So how far behind is the embedded router world,still? dpreed
2018-07-26 13:56 ` [Cerowrt-devel] So how far behind is the embedded router world, still? Mikael Abrahamsson
2018-07-26 16:45 ` valdis.kletnieks
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2018-07-27 12:18 dpreed
2018-07-25 18:50 Dave Taht
2018-07-25 19:14 ` valdis.kletnieks
2018-07-25 19:49   ` dpreed
2018-07-25 20:00     ` Dave Taht
2018-07-25 20:17 ` Jim Gettys
2018-07-26  8:53 ` Mikael Abrahamsson
2018-07-26 14:13   ` Jonathan Morton
2018-07-26 16:48     ` dpreed
2018-07-26 20:15       ` Dave Taht
2018-07-26 20:34         ` Joel Wirāmu Pauling
2018-07-27  9:31       ` Mikael Abrahamsson

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