Linaro Blog

A few weeks back I went to Hong Kong to attend Linaro Connect Asia 2013 in Hong Kong(LCA13-Hong Kong). This event took place at the Gold Coast Hotel on 4-8 March.  It was a really awesome experience with many enthusiastic participants from around the world sharing their exciting presentations, participating in interactive sessions on upcoming challenges, attending advanced training sessions, learning latest techniques on hacking member boards and so much more.

The list of attendees who gave keynotes included Jonathan Corbet (LWN), Lars Kurth and Mark Heath (Citrix), Jason Taylor (Facebook), Greg Kroah-Hartman (Linux Foundation). In addition to these keynote speakers, Karim Yaghmour (Opersys, Inc.) ran an Embedded Android Training Workshop.

Keynote talks started each days events and was really interesting. Jonathan Corbet talked about the importance of taking the big.LITTLE switcher code forward for community review. Lars Kurth, the Xen Community Manager discussed Xen on the ARMv8 platform. Jason Taylor discussed how Facebook servers handle data. Greg Kroah-Hartman gave a very interesting talk about how people often commit mistakes unknowingly when sending patches upstream. He stressed the importance of testing your code and then gave practical examples on how the lack of testing could jeopardize the entire device tree when the code is submitted.

For me, the most interesting topics at LCA13-Hong Kong included:

• The Embedded Android Training Workshop with sessions about Working with AOSP and Native Android User Space
• QA Services for Kernel CI monitoring to support the upstream kernel community directly
• ARMv8 AArch64 Porting effort given by Riku Voipio

In addition to theses sessions we had interactive sessions on LAVA during the LAVA Training Workshops, the afternoon hacking session and more. There were a lot of ideas and discussion with so many hot-chips and exciting challenges and it was exciting to talk about what works and what we were going to do next.

A heartfelt thanks all the team members of ARM and Linaro for their joint working effort in releasing of big.LITTLE IKS and ARMv8 model.  None of this would have been possible without the effort of everyone at Linaro and ARM.

Linaro announced its newest group– the Linaro Networking Group (LNG)– which builds on the model that was created with Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG) and brings together members with several new companies.

Overall this was a very exciting week for me and  I cherished every moment during at this Connect event. I hope others thoroughly enjoyed this event as much as I did connect. The social events which took place during the week were amazing as well. I enjoyed all the discussions during the evening Meet and Greet.  Spending time with all my friends was great fun as we went to Mong Konk to do some electronics related shopping, and to Lantau Island and the Big Buddha Temple, which is so amazing and peaceful.

Our next Connect event–Linaro Connect Europe 2013 (LCE13)–will be in Dublin, Ireland.

I hope to get back to you very soon

Linaro Connect Europe 2013 Banner

Linaro Connect Europe 2013 (LCE13-Dublin) will take place at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, Ireland on 8 – 12 July.  Registration for this event is now open.

What is Linaro Connect all about?

Linaro Connect is all about engineering and building the future of Linux on ARM.  Each day starts out with exciting and informational keynotes, followed by a morning of sessions where the focus is on face-to-face collaboration that is meant to progress the engineering efforts around Linux on ARM.  These sessions are split into tracks which include kernel, power management, toolchain, graphics and multimedia, platform, validation, and QA tracks. In addition to these tracks there are also various training workshops and mini-summits throughout the week.

Engineers and other participants who attend LCE13-Dublin can expect to return to their companies with the latest Linux developments around ARM, new ways of optimizing ARM technology, an improved upstreaming support network and a strong desire to return.

While we do offer remote participation for most sessions through Google+ Hangouts On Air, nothing beats the opportunities that come from face-to-face interaction in sessions and “hallway” tracks. It is this face-to-face interaction with leading open source maintainers and engineers that is a key benefit for all those who participate in person at the event.

What did I miss at the last Linaro Connect event?

If you are wondering what Linaro Connect events are all about then check out the summary from Linaro Connect Asia 2013 (LCA13-Hong Kong).

Where can I find out more about LCE13-Dublin?

To find out more about LCE13-Dublin please take a look at the event website. New information will be added as the schedule of events is finalized, so check back often.

How can I register to attend?

Go to connect.linaro.org, then click on the “Register Now” button and follow those instructions.  There is a registration fee for this event. If you have questions about how to register please email connect@linaro.org

Linaro Connect Asia 2013 Group Photo

Linaro Connect Asia 2013 (LCA13) took place at the Gold Coast Hotel in Hong Kong on 4 – 8 March. The themes that echoed through all the keynotes, the sessions, and even the hallway tracks were open collaboration and how to be good citizens in the upstream kernel and other member communities.

There were a total of 308 people who attended Linaro Connect Asia 2013 representing 46 companies. Co-located with Linaro Connect Asia 2013 was the Open Compute Project (OCP) Asia Summit which had 40 attendees. There were over 3,100 meals served to attendees and 77 sessions and 126 meetings which were held through out the week. Joe Bates, VP of Member Services for Linaro summed up the awesome busyness of this week in his “Wrap-Up” talk on Friday, 8 March 2013. This was one of the most productive Connect events to date with more moving pieces and parts than ever before.

Engineers returning to their companies after Linaro Connect Asia 2013 should be able to boast about knowledge of the latest software developments around ARM, new ways of optimizing the latest ARM technology and a strong desire to return.

Linaro Connect Asia 2013 was all about engineering. The event sessions as you can see are a mixture of discussion, planning and agreement about how to engineer solutions to the projects being run within Linaro. There were 6 keynotes and the sessions were split into focused kernel, power management, toolchain, graphics and multimedia, platform, validation, and QA tracks with Mini-summits and workshops laced throughout the week to bring focus to cross-team thinking and training in key areas.

There was the opportunity for face to face interaction with leading open source maintainers such as Greg Khoar-Hartman, the upstream stable Linux kernel maintainer and many other engineers which is a key benefit for many attendees.

Remote participation was also available for most sessions via Google Hangouts OnAir, but nothing beats the opportunities for interaction in person. Below are links to the daily schedules, slide decks, etherpad notes, video sessions and interviews from the event.

To join with the team building the future of Linux on ARM, plan on joining us for Linaro Connect Europe 2013 (LCE13) in Dublin from 8 to 12 July.

Keynotes

Daily Schedule

There were 5 full days of events and sessions

LAVA Workshop

The LAVA Workshop consisted of 4 hours of packed with LAVA information. Attendees needed only their LCA13 registration badge, laptop with prerequisites software pre-installed and the motivation to learn how LAVA administration and test case development works.

ARM Server Mini Summit

The ARM Server Mini Summit consisted of 4 sessions about the following topics:

UEFI: Updates on the maintainership rules, Linaro tree, SCT and test integration in LAVA, collaboration with ARM and the Tianocore community, technical achievements and plans for the next steps, discussion on PXE boot.

ACPI: Updates on ACPICA porting on ARM and initial trials with ACPI tables. Plans for the next steps.

Verticals: web server and caching technologies: Enable the web server vertical application use case, define the configuration towards evaluating the performance and identifying potential bottlenecks. Discuss about caching technologies and reverse proxies.

Verticals: HipHopVM and Hadoop Distributed File System: Updates on HipHopVM porting onto the v8 Foundation model, interpreter and bytecode jitting. Updates on Hadoop Distributed Filesystem performance.

Networking on ARM

While not a mini-summit it did work out that on Wednesday 6 March there were 3 hours of back to back sessions dedicated to networking on ARM. This group of sessions included:

PREEMPT_RT: PREEMPT_RT is a set of maintained kernel patches supporting realtime operations. Historically, the ARM platform support has ‘bit-rotted’ over time; there being a lack of ongoing testing and maintainance. As well as adding features, we need to bring PREEMPT_RT into a continuous integration loop. Other patchsets of interest to networking include NO_HZ_FULL. There may be some cross over with zero overhead Linux.

Data plane: This session took a look at kernel improvements and data plane frameworks. Investigated frameworks for efficient data plane operations in user space. Following this investigation, we recommend areas to invest engineering effort. Candidates that were considered included: UNETQ, VFIO (Virtual Function IO), UIO, NetMap, and PF_RING / DNA (Direct NIC Access).

Big Endian Challenges in Networking: Much networking software is big endian and, even in the cases where it was written to run either endian, it is rarely fully tested. The approach that LNG is taking is to extend gcc, marking modules and data structures as big endian. Code will be generated that accesses the memory appropriately, swapping bytes as needed (this is known as a bi-endian compiler). Other tools will be considered, for example, extensions to the Linux Kernel sparse checker.

Embedded Android Training Workshop

Karim Yaghmour of Opersys led this workshop.

While Android has been created for mobile devices — phones first and now tablets — it can, nonetheless, be used as the basis of any touch-screen system, whether it be mobile or not. Essentially, Android is a custom-built embedded Linux distribution with a very elaborate and rich set of user-space abstractions, APIs, services and a virtual machine. This four-part workshop was aimed at embedded developers wanting to build touch-based embedded systems using Android. It covered Android from the ground up, enabling developers to get a firm hold on the components that make up Android and how they need to be adapted to an embedded system.

Specifically, Karim started by introducing Android’s overall architecture and then proceed to peel off Android’s layers one-by-one. Then he covered the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), the open source project under which Android’s source code is released. Following that session Karim dug into the native Android user-space, Android’s power tools, and covered how hardware support is implemented in Android. Given that Android is built on top of Linux, Karim also reviewed some embedded Linux tricks and showed how the kernel is modified to support the Android user-space. Additionally, these sessions looked at the System Server, the Android Framework and core Android applications, as well as how to customize them.

Videos

There were a total of 108 videos recorded and posted to various YouTube channels from Linaro Hangouts on Air (informal live streaming and recordings of the sessions for remote participation), armdevices.net, and FormsCom. All of the videos have also been downloaded and put on people.linaro.org for those who can not access YouTube.

Interviews

Nicolas “Charbax” Charbonnier of ARMdevices.net joined Linaro Community Manager, Amber Graner and the FormsCom AV crew to film and interview various people about their roles and take on various aspects of the ARM ecosystem and Linaro. Those interviews include:

(Please note that as new videos from this event are published they will be added to the LCA13 wiki page)

1st Annual Linaro Awards

Linaro has seen tremendous growth and has made a significant impact on the Linux kernel due to the talented and motivated Linaro engineers and assignees. On Friday, we recognized those whose impact and contributions have been especially noteworthy. Those recognized included:

The Arm Team

• Roger Teague and the ARM Engineers

Outstanding Team Contribution 2012: big.LITTLE IKS

• Nicolas Pitre, Technical Architect, Office of the CTO, Linaro
• Dave Martin, Kernel Engineer, ARM
• Viresh Kumar, Power Management Engineer, Power Management Team, Linaro
• Amit Kucheria, Tech Lead, Power Management Team, Linaro
• Mathieu Poirer, Kernel Engineer, Samsung Landing Team, Linaro
• David Zinman, Project Manager, Technical Management Team, Linaro
• Naresh Kamboju, QA Services Expert, QA Services Team, Linaro
• Vishal Bhoj, Android Engineer, Android Team, Linaro
• Amit Pundir, Android Engineer, Android Team, Linaro

Most Significant Contribution to the Industry 2012: ARM SoC

• Arnd Bergmann, Upstream Kernel Engineer, Kernel Team, Linaro

Most Significant Contribution to the Industry 2012: UMM

• Jesse Barker, former Graphics WG Technical Lead, ARM
• Sumit Semwal, Graphic Engineer, Graphics Team, Linaro
• Benjamin Gaignard, Multimedia Specialist, Graphics Team, Linaro
• Rob Clark, Graphics Engineer, Graphics Team, TI

Outstanding individual contribution 2012

• Fathi Boudra, Tech Lead, Developer Platform, Linaro
• Andy Green, Tech Lead, Fujitsu Landing Team, Linaro
• Ilias Biris, Technical Program Manager, Linaro Enterprise Group

New starter with biggest impact across Linaro 2012

• Andrea Gallo, Director Linaro Enterprise Group

Above-and-beyond award for Member Satisfaction 2012

• Anmar Oueja, Technical Program Manager, Linaro Enterprise Group

Online superstar 2012

• Bernhard Rosenkränzer, Android Engineer, Android Team Linaro

Outstanding upstream contributor 2012

• Sachin Kamat, Multimedia Engineer, Samsung Landing Team, Linaro
• Linus Walleij, Kernel Engineer, Kernel Team, Linaro
• John Stultz, Kernel Engineer, Kernel Team, Linaro

Congratulations to all who received these awards. The video for the Awards session can be seen here. For those who can’t access YouTube the download is available here.

Demo Friday

Individuals and organizations who are using Linaro Code and ARM-processor based boards are encourages to show-off their work at Linaro Connect events. (Video and Images from this portion of the event are still in production and will be available over the upcoming weeks.) If you or your organization would like to participate in the upcoming Demo Friday event in Dublin, Ireland please click here for more information.

Introduction to Linaro

If you have ever wondered who makes up Linaro, where those people live, how we work and what makes the organization so remarkable, then we strongly encourage you to watch the presentation that Mike Levine, HR Director gave at this event.

Join Linaro in Dublin

If you or your organization joined us in Hong Kong, thank you! If you are looking through this amazing list of sessions and videos and thinking that you or your organization would benefit from attending a Linaro Connect event and you’re kicking yourself because you missed all the energy and excitement that comes from building the future of Linux on ARM; then join us in Dublin

More information on Linaro Connect can be found at: connect.linaro.org. Registration for Linaro Connect Europe 2013 is now open.

Linaro Connect Europe 2013 Banner Image

As the sun rises over the Gold Coast Hotel this morning we are reminded that Linaro Connect Asia 2013 in Hong Kong is coming to an end today.

It’s been a busy week of training workshops, mini-summits, planning, hacking, interviewing, and more.

Presentation Slides

Presentation slides for most of the sessions can be found at: http://www.linaro.org/linux-on-arm/presentations/Q/connect-events

Please note: If the slide deck is not there for a session you are looking for it means  ether no slides were used or the presenter did not share their slide deck with us.

Videos

The sessions that were streamed using Google+ Hangouts on Air can be found on the Linaro On Air Youtube Channel.

The video interviews and sessions that were filmed by FormsCom can be found on the LinaroOrg YouTube Channel.

The video interviews and sessions recorded by Nicolas “Charbax” Charbonnier can be found on armdevices.net.

Schedule of Events – Day 5 – Friday – 8 March 2013

08:30: LCA-13 Awards – Grand Ballroom C&D –  #connect-ballroom-cd (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

09:00: ARM Enterprise Server: Assembly Dependencies – Grand Ballroom C&D –  #connect-ballroom-cd (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)
09:00: PLATFORM BUFFER BBI /Kernel CI and Releases- Grand Ballroom A – #connect-ballroom-a (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)
09:00: Toolchain Working Group Wrapup – Grand Ballroom B – #connect-ballroom-b (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

10:00: Testing Networking Code in LAVA/CI – Grand Ballroom A – #connect-ballroom-a (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event)

Demo Friday

Our Demo Friday event will take place between 5:00 – 6:00 pm today in Grand Ballroom B. More information on this event can be found at: http://www.linaro.org/connect/demo-friday

Remote Participation

Remote Participation instructions can be found at: http://www.linaro.org/connect/remote-participation

Linaro Connect Asia Day 2 kicked off with a Xen on ARM keynote which was given by Lars Kurth and Mark Heath of Citrix.

Which was followed by the ARM Server Mini-Summit, Embedded Android Training, LAVA workshop and more.

Linaro is growing and so is participation in Linaro Connect.

Linaro Connect Asia 2013 Group Photo

Videos and Presentation Slides?

Presentation Slides for various sessions can be found on the resources page of  linaro.org.

The Google+ Hangout on Air session videos can be found at on the Linaro on Air YouTube channel.

Linaro Connect Asia 2013 Day 3 Sessions

08:30: Jason Taylor, Facebook – Keynote – Grand Ballroom C&D –  #connect-ballroom-cd (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

09:00: BOF Reliability Accessability and Serviceability (RAS) – Grand Ballroom B – #connect-ballroom-b (webchat link) (Etherpad)

09:00: Networking: PREEMPT_RT – Grand Ballroom C&D –  #connect-ballroom-cd (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

09:00: Is suspend a special case of runtime PM – Grand Ballroom A – #connect-ballroom-a (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

10:00: KVM for Core, LEG and LNG – Grand Ballroom C&D –  #connect-ballroom-cd (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

10:00: AArch64 porting effort – moving from essential software to important software – Grand Ballroom A – #connect-ballroom-a (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

10:00: Linaro QA goodies for the kernel.org community – Grand Ballroom B – #connect-ballroom-b (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

11:00: Networking: Data Plan –  Grand Ballroom C&D –  #connect-ballroom-cd (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)
11:00: Common Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) Architecture – Grand Ballroom A – #connect-ballroom-a (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

11:00: Multi-Node and Hyperscale Testing Use-Cases in LAVA – Grand Ballroom B – #connect-ballroom-b (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

12:00: Networking: Big Endian Challenges in Networking – Grand Ballroom C&D –  #connect-ballroom-cd (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

12:00: Working with the AOSP (Embedded Android Training) – Grand Ballroom B – #connect-ballroom-b (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

14:00: LAVA-LMP: Linaro’s GPL hardware assists for physical testing and remote control – Grand Ballroom A – #connect-ballroom-a (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

15:00: Interface between UEFI and Virtualization solutions – Grand Ballroom C&D –  #connect-ballroom-cd (webchat link) (Etherpad)

16:00: LAVA Workshop Day 2 – Hands on LAVA – Grand Ballroom B – #connect-ballroom-b (webchat link) (Etherpad) (Google+ Event Listing)

Remote Participation

Remote Participation instructions can be found at: http://www.linaro.org/connect/remote-participation

Linaro, the not-for-profit engineering organization which works to consolidate and optimize open source Linux software and tools for the ARM architecture, together with its members, partners and community are growing and influencing many areas of the ARM ecosystem and as such its women in technology footprint is growing well.

At this Connect event, we took a moment to not only take a group photo to mark the participation in our event, but we also took a Women in Technology photo to capture how women’s participation within the Linaro Community is growing.

Linaro Connect Asia 2013 Group Photo

More information about Linaro Connect can be found at: http://www.linaro.org/connect

Find out you can participate remotely at: http://www.linaro.org/connect/remote-participation