Support of the Nezha Allwinner D1 in meta-riscv.
2022-05-18 , Kirkstone

meta-riscv is a OpenEmbedded / Yocto layer for RISC-V based boards and it contains a BSP for it. There aren't many boards on the market with RISC-V architecture but in 2021 SBC Nezha board with Allwinner D1 chip onboard was published and available to the market. It has basic support in mainline Linux kernel, U-Boot, and OpenSBI but also specific firmware eg. boot0 SPL, but mentioned RISC-V baseboard had no support in the Yocto Project. The presentation will show you the process of integrating a specific Nezha firmware into meta-riscv. The idea behind it was to spread the popularity of the Nezha board in the community.


Nezha is a development board (SBC) that is designed by an AWOL. This project uses a D1 SoC from Allwinner which is used for the first time by the general public. Probably Nezha is the first massive produced and available SBC based on RISC-V architecture. It has a reference Linux system called Tina OS (based at OpenWRT) and other popular distros like Debian and Fedora, but for some unknown reason Nezha board didn't has support in a Yocto Project, but now it has. I would like to introduce to the community what the preparation of support in Yocto looked like, and what problems I had to face. At the moment, the support of specific software packages is at the development stage, hence the creation of appropriate recipes in Yocto will also facilitate the development process. I will focus on the introduction of the SBC and meta-riscv itself, machine configuration, prepared recipes for Linux kernel, U-Boot, OpenSBI, and boot0 SPL which are specific for this board and other specific configurations. In the end, you will see a working Yocto system running at the Nezha board.

See also: Presentation in pdf format. Title: Support of the Nezha Allwinner D1 in meta-riscv (1.6 MB)

Require a lot from himself and want to extend his knowledge. He's now focused on Linux embedded systems but also is interested in the modern automotive industry and microcontroller programming. A lover of Japanese culture and a self-taught of the Japanese language.