Gateworks Newport Family Support

Getting Started	Newport Software	Peripherals	User Manuals
Wireless / WiFi Radios	Cellular Modems	GPS	3D Model	Shop Newport Accessories

The Gateworks Newport product family utilizes the Cavium ARM ThunderX CN80xx / CN81xx SoC (System On Chip) offering a large variety of peripherals with a focus on Networking, and Security. See ​here for a product comparison matrix.

Links

Please note: This is a subset of information for Newport, however, please visit our Main Wiki for all other information

Software

• Newport Board Support Packages and Operating Systems
• Linux kernel support
• Booting Third Party Linux Distro's on Newport
• Newport JTAG Programming

Peripheral Support

• Gateworks Expansion Modules - GW16081, GW16082, GW16083
• SPI Support
• GPIO Control
• LED Control
• Connector and Cable Information
• mSATA Information
• GPS Support
• CAN Bus Support
• PCI/PCIe information
• PCIe Accessory Cards
• SIM and microSD Card Information
• Gateworks System Controller (GSC) - Temperature, voltage, RTC, GPIO, Digital IO, I/O, pushbutton, etc
• Gateworks Enclosures

Performance / Processor / Memory / Power / Thermal

• Multi Core Processing
• Increasing Boot Speeds

Other Info

• ​Product Info
• ​Where to Buy
• Newport Board Errata
• Linux Kernel Device-Tree info

JTAG Programming

The Gateworks JTAG dongle (GW16099) is available in the Newport Dev Kit as well as on the Gateworks web store ​here

All Newport boards have a 10-pin JTAG header which provides:

• JTAG Programming for embedded FLASH - see here for instructions
• Serial Console access via UART0 (/dev/ttyAMA0)

Please Note:

• Linux software is supported for programming Newport (jtag_usbv4 required). Windows is not supported at this time. (serial console through Windows does work).
• JTAG Programming of eMMC has not been made available yet. You must boot from a microSD image to program or re-program eMMC flash

User Manual

• ​All Gateworks User Manuals

Processor Reference Manual / Datasheet / Errata

The ​​Cavium Website contains details about the OCTEON TX Dual and Quad core 64bit ARM based SoC's.

Additional references:

• ​​OCTEON TX CN80XX-CN81XX Product Brief

Board Support Packages (BSP) Software

Choosing a BSP

Gateworks offers several Board Support Packages for the Newport Product family. Which one we recommend depends a bit upon what your goal is and what your experience level is

• OpenWrt - Coming Soon for Newport - intended for wireless routers and access points (low flash and memory footprint)
  • Recommended for networking users wanting to create a headless router, VPN, basestation, wireless access point and more. Produces by far the smallest storage and memory footprint but users new to Embedded Linux will have a bit of a learning curve
  • Fairly up-to-date and/or vanilla kernel support
  • Latest wireless drivers (via linux-backports)
  • Custom application config and init system (nice for small footprint, but can make adding support for additional packages more work)
  • Wide variety of packages (including a fairly nice web-admin)
  • Console-based build system (expect 60mins to build BSP for a specific board family)
  • Downloadable SDK and Toolchain available to build apps on a development host without building the entire BSP
  • Pre-built images available

• Ubuntu
  • Recommended for developers trying to heavily leverage opensource software packages or libraries that are not supported by the other BSP's. This is the most user-friendly for developers new to Embedded Linux but will not produce a very trimmed down filesystem image.
  • Uses mainline kernel.
  • Supports all Newport features.
  • Documentation provided to use Ubuntu pre-built packages and debootstrap to create a root filesystem in minutes
  • Native compilation: no SDK or cross-toolchain needed

The following table may also help in choosing what BSP is right for you:

Feature	OpenWrt	Ubuntu	Notes
Pre-built images	Yes	Yes
Storage Needed	<256MB	2GB or larger
Build-System	Yes	No	1
Toolchain	SDK	Native	2
Web-Admin	Yes	No	3

1. The OpenWrt BSP contain an integrated build-system. Ubuntu has step-by-step instructions on how to build an bootable system in 10 or so steps.
2. The OpenWrt BSP provides a downloadable SDK for cross-compiling applications on a development hosts. For Ubuntu native development and compilation is supported.
3. The OpenWrt BSP is designed to be a wireless router and has an integrated web-admin for configuration and control.

OpenWrt Board Support Package (BSP)

Coming Soon

Newport OpenWrt BSP:

• Pre-Built Binaries
• Building/Installing OpenWrt w/ Gateworks Patches for the Newport Family
• Main OpenWrt Wiki Page
• OpenWrt SDK Toolchain
• join the ​maillist to follow activity
• GPIO and LED Configuration

The Newport OpenWrt BSP provides the following:

• Linux 4.x kernel (fairly vanilla)
• latest wireless drivers (compat-wireless)
• tuned for minimal FLASH/memory footprint (entire distro fits on embedded 16MB FLASH)

Ubuntu

Gateworks offers a pre-built Ubuntu distribution using the latest Gateworks kernel as well as instructions on how to build your own Ubuntu based distribution.

• Ubuntu Wiki and Software

Third Party Linux Distros

While Gateworks cannot fully support all Linux distros, it is relatively simple to overlay a Gateworks Newport kernel onto any non-Gateworks third party Linux distro rootfs image.

The following links will describe what is needed:

1. Linux kernel supporting Newport: linux/kernel
2. Root Filesystem: see below
3. Bootable media: linux/blockdev

Root filesystem Sources

There are several sources of pre-built root filesystems that are compatible with Newport. As Newport uses an ARM 64bit based SoC, you need to use something that is compatible with an ARMv8 instruction set. Many pre-built distributions will reference 'arm64' which means 'ARM 64-bit' which is appropriate for the CN80XX / CN81XX SoC.

Some popular third-party sources:

• ​Ubuntu Core - this is a minimal filesystem that you can build off of at runtime by adding packages from various repositories.
• ​Linaro - Linaro has several root filesystems including server, nano, developer, core, and ALIP. Each root filesystem will have different things installed for different purposes. Choose carefully which will work for you.

Notes:

• some root filesystems may require you to manually add a user before booting (ie Ubuntu Core)
• the default Newport bootloader expects to find the Image in the /boot directory on the 2nd partition of type ext2/3/4

Mainline Linux Kernel support

Gateworks actively participates in the development of the Linux kernel.

Cavium licenses CPU core IP from ARM and the name they give the CPU core within the OCTEON-TX CN80XX / CN81XX is the Cavium 'ThunderX'. Therefore many of the peripheral drivers within the Linux kernel have 'thunderx' in their name and more often then not the 'OCTEON' name refers to the older OCTEON MIP64 core.

The following table shows what OCTEON-TX CN80XX / CN81XX peripherals support is available in the mainline kernel starting from 4.13:

Feature	Support	Notes
SMP	Yes
serial UART	Yes
I2C	Yes (4.9+)
Networking MAC (thunderx_bgx)	Yes (4.2+)
Networking PHY (thunder_xcv)	Yes (4.9+)
PCI	Yes (4.6+)
SPI	Yes (4.9+)
MultiMediaCard eMMC / microSD	Yes (4.12+)
HW RNG (Hardware Random Number Generator)	Yes (4.9+)
HW Compressions offload	Yes (4.12+)
Crypto	Yes (4.11+)
RTC	Yes
LED/GPIO	Yes (4.14+)
USB 3.0	Yes
mSATA	Yes
CAN bus	Yes

For details on building a Linux kernel see here