I'm sponsoring this fast-track for Garrett D'Amore.
Timer expires 03/20/2007. Release binding is "Patch"; stability level
for the TAD,* platform names defined by this case is "Committed".
Problem
-------
Sun recently had on the market a line of laptops from OEM vendors under
the marketing name Ultra 3.
One of these was the Tadpole SPARCLE, which is essentially a grover
(SunBlade 100) in a mobile case. There are other changes, such as
improvements for power management, touchpad management, and such.
Historically, Tadpole has always provided its own kernel software for its
platforms, but we would like to integrate as much of our support into
OpenSolaris as possible. This will make it easier for customers to run
the latest Solaris release, and will also enable customers to install
directly from Sun-supplied media rather than requiring custom media from
Tadpole.
Proposed Solution
-----------------
We want to initially provide a uname -i for these platforms, which has
already been determined.
The platforms we want to do this for are:
uname -i platform codename
-----------------------------------------------------------------
TAD,UltraBookIIe UltraBookII dinsdale
TAD,Sparcbook5000 Sparcbook5000 phoenix
TAD,SPARCLE SPARCLE douglas
TAD,Viper Viper viper
The first three of these are UltraSPARC 2e laptops, but they have very
different system boards, and so signficant differences in peripherals,
and bus layouts. They also different power management units (PMUs) and
batteries.
The last is Viper, which is a 15" UltraSPARC 3i based laptop. (It also
covers the SPARCLE1000, which is the same except that the cpu is restricted
to 1GHz.) A significant point with this last one is that there is also a
group of 17" laptops which have the same name in OBP, but which are quite
different. Collectively, these are known as Bullfrog, but they include at
least 3 three different major board revisions. We are not proposing to
deal with Bullfrog at this time.
Some will point out that Tadpole is now a part of General Dynamics. However,
these platforms have been shipping for a long time, and changing "TAD," to
"GD," is not be practical for the installed base.
We are only requesting permission to allocate the names, integrate the
platmods, and establish the directories for them in /platform and
/usr/platform at this time. We will use symbolic links to existing
platforms or the generic sun4u directories where appropriate.
This will also let us use of some optimized code for UltraSPARC 3i processors
that we currently do not get with the default platform name that gets assigned,
"sun4u".
We would also like to reserve, for future use, the following names:
TAD,UltraBookIIi
TAD,VoyagerIIi
These names will require a firmware update to existing products to make
use of, as they currently self-identify as SUNW,Ultra-5_10, which is most
definitely not correct (there are in fact some conflicting differences between
these platforms.) Reserving the names now gives us the option of
releasing a firmware update, so that we can cleanly resolve the differences
in Solaris.
We would like to use the code names above in the source tree, so that
we would be adding directories such as "usr/src/uts/sun4u/douglas" and
"usr/src/uts/sun4u/phoenix" to the tree.
Missing Functionality
---------------------
Power management and other platform-specific features will be introduced in
follow-on cases.
Generally, without these features, the platforms function
properly, but suffer from minor failings. For example, the system beeper
may not be active, and there will not be a way to get power status information.
The built-in pointing device may not support some enhanced features like
palm detection, etc. Some specific peripherals like integrated SDcard and
MMC readers and WLAN devices may not function.
Generally, the platform will be functional enough to install Solaris, as
well as install any additional software received from Tadpole.
Also, the changes we are proposing will not conflict with future enhancements
received from Tadpole and do not conflict with the software currently provided
by Tadpole for these platforms.
Commitment Level
----------------
We are request that the above names be established as "Committed", save
for the two names we are reserving but not delivering any changes at this time
("TAD,UltraBookIIi" and "TAD,VoyagerIIi").
Appendix I: Future Functionality
---------------------------------
We anticipate providing the following in subsequent putbacks, after obtaining
any additional needed ARC approval. (Note however that this is just for
informational purposes, and is not part of what we are requesting permission
for at this time.)
- power button support
- power management support (pending support from Solaris framework,
such as that used by ACPI). This includes details like lidswitch
actions, battery management, LCD backlight control, etc. We'd like
this to include features for defining the action to take on events
such as external DC power being removed, the battery hitting certain
low-power thresholds, etc.
- "extra" button support ("E" buttons)... though the details of how
these get to userland are not worked out (ACPI? sysevent?)
- integrated WLAN support (pcpw enhancements, if neeeded, to work with
miniPCI PRISM 2.5 devices) -- these aren't necessarily platform
specific.
- integrated SDcard/MMC/Memory Stick reader support. This might have
to come as a closed binary delivery, due to the NDAs under which they
were developed.
- keyboard enhancements for Sun keys on PS/2 keyboards (CR 6484159)
- enhancements to touchpad support (palm detection, doubletap, etc.)
- bug fixes to cardbus for any platforms that need it
Appendix II: Past and present Tadpole platforms
-----------------------------------------------
Here are the platforms that Tadpole has shipped in the past (for which at some
point we might want to add support to Solaris):
name uname -i code name notes
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SPARCbook5000 TAD,Sparcbook5000 phoenix ultra2e laptop (also
SPARCbook6000), black
case, dual hard disks,
SXGA+ DFP, rage graphics
SPARCLE TAD,SPARCLE douglas ultra2e laptop, sun
blue case, also OEM'd
as Ultra 3. single
hdd, SD/MMC reader,
XGA DFP, rage
UltraBook IIe TAD,UltraBookIIe dinsdale 1st gen ultra2e laptop,
heavy metal case,
XGA DFP,
derived from UltraIIi.
Viper TAD,Viper viper ultrasparc3i based 15"
laptop. (same case as
douglas) aka
SPARCLE1000
Bullfrog TAD,Viper bullfrog this covers a variety
of 17" mobile servers,
including single and
dual cpu models, diff.
graphics boards, etc.
Unfortunately, these
reused the TAD,Viper
designation.
Voyager IIi SUNW,Ultra-5_10 voyager2i a shoebox-ish model,
largely a U10 in a box,
but with custom power,
etc. its unfortunate
that the uname -i was
not changed. there
are two submodels with
some significant
differences in the
busses.
UltraBook IIi SUNW,Ultra-5_10 ultrabook2i basically a mobile U10.
again, unfortunately,
a different value for
uname -i was not used.
