Quartz64 Development

This page documents the current status of software support for the Quartz64 single-board computer, and provides links to resources to help prospective contributors get started. Information is kept current on a best-effort basis as various patches get accepted into the kernel.

Overview

Upstreaming Status

Function	Status		Component	Notes	Applies To
Video Output	Linux Mainline		rockchipdrm/VOP2	As of 5.19-rc1[1], Also featured in Phoronix Article[2], 4k@30 support and other improvements in 6.4-rc1[3]
	Needs porting		rockchip-edpphy-naneng	Downstream: [4] and [5] Coordinate any porting with Rockchip first
	Linux Mainline		dw-mipi-dsi-rockchip	As of 6.1[6]
3D Acceleration	Linux Mainline	Upstream Mesa	panfrost	As of 5.18[7]
Video Decode	Linux Mainline	GStreamer only, no ffmpeg[8]	hantro using v4l2-requests	VDPU121 handling 1080p MPEG-2, VP8 and H.264. Mainline as of 5.19[9]
	Needs writing		rkvdec2 using v4l2-requests	VDPU346 handling 4K H.265, H.264 and VP9
	Needs writing		rkdjpeg using v4l2-requests	VDPU720 handling JPEG, User:CounterPillow is working on this
Video Encode	Linux Mainline	GStreamer only	JPEG on VEPU121	Hantro-based. Mainline as of 6.1[10]
	Needs writing	?	H.264 on VEPU121	Hantro-based
	Needs writing	?	VP8 on VEPU121	Hantro-based
	Needs writing	?	H.264 on VEPU540	rkvenc-based
	Needs writing	?	H.265 on VEPU540	rkvenc-based
Audio	Linux Mainline		rockchip-i2s-tdm	As of 5.16[11]
	Linux Mainline		rockchip-spdif	As of 5.15[12]
	Linux Mainline		rk817-codec	As of 5.14[13].	Quartz64 Model A/B
Bootloader	In review[14]		TF-A
	Merged		U-Boot	See below. Quartz64 and SOQuartz as of v2023.10-rc2[15]
	In progress[16]		Tianocore EDK II
Device Tree	Linux Mainline		Quartz64 Model A	As of 5.16[17]	Quartz64 Model A
	Linux Mainline		Quartz64 Model B	As of 5.19[18]	Quartz64 Model B
	Linux Mainline		SOQuartz	As of 5.19[19]	SOQuartz
	Linux Mainline		PineNote	As of 5.18[20]	PineNote
Gigabit Ethernet	Linux Mainline		rk3566-gmac	As of 5.14[21]
	Linux Mainline		yt8511-phy	As of 5.14[22]
IOMMU	Linux Mainline		rockchip-iommu	As of 5.14[23]
GPIO	Linux Mainline		gpio-rockchip	As of 5.15[24]
pinctrl	Linux Mainline
Thermal Regulation	Linux Mainline		rockchip-thermal	As of 5.14[25]
PCIe	Linux Mainline		pcie-dw-rockchip	As of 5.15[26]
Power Management	Linux Mainline		rockchip-pm-domains	As of 5.14[27]
Voltage Control	Linux Mainline		rk3568-pmu-io-voltage-domain	As of 5.15[28]
SPI	Linux Mainline		spi-rockchip	As of 5.14[29]. Necessary device tree changes in review.
Battery	Linux Mainline		rk817-charger	As of 6.1[30]	Quartz64 Model A, Pinenote
Microphone	Linux Mainline		rockchip-saradc	As of 5.15[31]. Headphone jack mic seems to connect to SARADC_VIN2_HP_HOOK, so I'm pretty sure that the dtsi and driver changes are needed for that mic to work
USB 2.0	Linux Mainline		rockchip-usb2phy	As of 5.17[32]
e-Ink	In review (RFC)[33]		rockchip-ebc	A DRM driver is available here; also see RK3566 EBC Reverse-Engineering
Combo PHY	Linux Mainline		naneng-combphy	As of 5.18[34]. Still requires DTS changes
RGA	Linux Mainline; Could be improved		rockchip-rga	As of 6.5[35]. Note that there's still a '4GB' problem and it's implementations has room for improvements (to put it midly [36] and [37])
Fan Controller	Needs writing		gp7101	Someone should write a pwm driver for it so we can then use pwm-fan	SOQuartz Blade
CSI Camera	Needs porting		rkisp	Downstream: [38]
	Linux Mainline		rockchip-inno-csidphy	As of 6.1[39]
NPU	Needs writing			Downstream version is a closed source SDK and open source kernel module rknpu. Major undertaking to reimplement this as Linux does not (yet) appear to have a generic architecture for neural accelerators.
Crypto	Needs porting		rk-crypto v2	Downstream driver [40] doesn't include a rk3568 compatible either, but the TRM shows that it seemingly matches.
TRNG	In review[41]		rockchip-rng
Wi-Fi	Needs porting		bes2600	A downstream driver is available but it makes use of some custom Rockchip interfaces and is designed for older kernels, plans are being made to port it to DKMS.	PineTab 2
	Linux Mainline		brcmfmac		Quartz64 Model B

Current Status

The following sections give an overview over the current status of different parts of the board. Some parts are waiting on a driver to be written or ported, others only need various adjustments.

According to pgwipeout, I/O device performance is within expected ranges now.

Working

• eMMC
• SDMMC0 (SD cards)
• GMAC (Gigabit Ethernet)
• USB 2.0
• SATA 2
• SATA 3
• UART
  • UART 0 (Pi-bus)
  • UART 1 (Bluetooth)
  • UART 2 (Pi-bus, debug)
• Video Decode
  • VP8
  • H.264
• Video Encode
  • JPEG (it's pretty bad)
• Battery
• GPU
• Video Output
  • HDMI
  • DSI
• Audio
  • Analog audio works
  • SPDIF works
  • HDMI works
• SPI — works, user needs to modify device tree to add devices
• I²C — works, user needs to modify device tree to add devices

Partially Working

• PCI-Express Controller — everything but devices that need cache coherency (e.g. dGPUs) should work
  • User:CounterPillow noticed some weirdness with NVMe devices disconnecting during heavy write operations, likely down due to power draw on one of the rails as the same sustained bandwidth could be achieved with a different PCIe device with no issue.
• SDMMC1 (Wi-Fi) — AP6256 working, BL602 needs some work to make it flash firmware
• GIC — needs errata published by Rockchip to get upstream to add device-specific workarounds^[42]

Confirmed Broken

• USB 3.0 (applies to Model A only) — only works with very short cables and depends on the device. This is due to a hardware design issue relating to the coupling capacitors needed for SATA, which shares the same lines as USB 3.0.
  • Hardware design changes have been suggested to engineers, it's in their hands now.
  • Fixed in newer revisions by leaving SATA unpopulated
• RGA — only works with memory ≤ 4 GiB, because Rockchip didn't make the address registers larger. Oopsie.

Needs Testing

• E-Paper
• Microphone Input
• CSI — needs CIF driver
• eDP — needs PHY driver and controller driver

TODO

ebc-dev Reverse Engineering and Development

The driver for the eInk panel needs to both be reverse engineered and then rewritten as C. In its current form, it is mostly an assembly dump produced by gcc with debug symbols. See RK3566 EBC Reverse-Engineering for details.

Investigate MCU

The RK3566 comes with an integrated RISC-V microcontroller (MCU). It communicates with the A55 host through the Mailbox system driven by the rockchip-mailbox driver. Since this MCU would be quite useful for things such as low power standby mode, investigating how it can be turned on and have firmware flashed to it should greatly enhance the power saving features of the PineNote.

I (liamur) did some investigation into the MCU and found that it is disabled by TF-A on suspend, and doesn't reside in a low-power part of the RK3566 anyway. It does however have access to most of the chip and could be used as (for example) a real-time coprocessor.

Mainline U-Boot Work

We currently use the "downstream" Rockchip U-Boot, which is based on an old version of U-Boot and contains vendor specific patches that have not undergone the same level of code review as they'd have done had they been submitted upstream.

While the lack of ATF sources means that using mainline U-Boot would still require the use of Rockchip provided binaries for the firmware, even with Rockchip blobs, a more modern version of U-Boot will be much nicer to use.

Mainline U-Boot contains good enough support for the RK3566 SoC used on the Quartz64 as of v2023.07 and have support for Quartz64 and SOQuartz as of v2023.10-rc2. Drivers for ethernet GMAC and Motorcomm PHY are supported as of v2024.01-rc1.

Things that could be done

This list is non-exhaustive as we don't exactly know how much is missing

• Port a basic VOP2 driver to get a framebuffer from u-boot

List of Useful Resources for this Task

• Downstream Rockchip U-Boot repository with Quartz64 specific patches: https://gitlab.com/pgwipeout/u-boot-rockchip/-/tree/quartz64
• Mainline Rockchip custodian U-Boot repository: https://source.denx.de/u-boot/custodians/u-boot-rockchip
• U-Boot Mailing List: https://lists.denx.de/listinfo/u-boot

eDP Driver Porting

The eDP PHY driver and controller driver needs to be ported, brought into shape and submitted with proper commit attribution to the Rockchip authors.

User:CounterPillow has experimentally ported stuff, but it's currently not working.

Linux Kernel Config Options

• CONFIG_SND_SOC_ROCKCHIP_I2S_TDM
  • for Analog and HDMI audio
• CONFIG_SND_SOC_RK817
  • for Analog audio on the Model A
• CONFIG_STMMAC_ETH
  • Ethernet
• CONFIG_DWMAC_ROCKCHIP
  • Ethernet
• CONFIG_MOTORCOMM_PHY
  • Ethernet PHY for Model A, set this one to Y, m won't work out of the box if the generic PHY driver is y and binds first. Alternatively tell users in board-specific setup instructions to force including the motorcomm module in initramfs if you set it to m.
• CONFIG_REALTEK_PHY
  • Ethernet PHY for Model B
• CONFIG_MMC_DW
  • MMC/SD
• CONFIG_MMC_DW_ROCKCHIP
  • MMC/SD
• CONFIG_MMC_SDHCI_OF_DWCMSHC
  • MMC/SD
• CONFIG_PCIE_ROCKCHIP_DW_HOST
  • PCIe
• CONFIG_PHY_ROCKCHIP_NANENG_COMBO_PHY
  • PHY for PCIe/SATA/USB3
• CONFIG_DRM_PANFROST
  • GPU
• CONFIG_SND_SOC_ROCKCHIP_SPDIF
  • SPDIF audio
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_DW_HDMI
  • HDMI PHY
• CONFIG_PHY_ROCKCHIP_INNO_DSIDPHY
  • MIPI DSI DPHY
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_VOP2
  • Video output
• CONFIG_ARCH_ROCKCHIP
  • General SoC support
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_PHY
  • General SoC support
• CONFIG_PHY_ROCKCHIP_INNO_USB2
  • USB 2
• CONFIG_RTC_DRV_RK808
  • Real-time Clock
• CONFIG_COMMON_CLK_RK808
  • Real-time Clock
• CONFIG_MFD_RK808
  • Various things relating to the RK817 chip
• CONFIG_CHARGER_RK817
  • RK817 charger
• CONFIG_REGULATOR_RK808
  • Voltage regulators
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_PM_DOMAINS
  • Power management domains
• CONFIG_GPIO_ROCKCHIP
  • GPIO support
• CONFIG_PINCTRL_ROCKCHIP
  • GPIO and general SoC support
• CONFIG_PWM_ROCKCHIP
  • PWM support
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_IOMMU
  • IOMMU support
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_MBOX
  • Mailbox support (for communication with MCU)
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_SARADC
  • Analog-to-digital conversion support, for e.g. microphones
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_THERMAL
  • Temperature sensor and thermal throttling support
• CONFIG_SPI_ROCKCHIP
  • SPI support
• CONFIG_VIDEO_HANTRO_ROCKCHIP
  • Hardware video decoder support
• CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_IODOMAIN
  • General SoC support so your I/O pins have the right voltage
• CONFIG_COMMON_CLK_ROCKCHIP
  • Common clock support
• CONFIG_PHY_ROCKCHIP_INNO_CSIDPHY
  • MIPI CSI DPHY
• CONFIG_I2C_RK3X
  • I2C support

Resources

Repositories

• pgwipeout's kernel tree
  • https://gitlab.com/pgwipeout/linux-next/-/tree/quartz64-v5.15-rc1
• BSP based development effort for SPL/U-Boot and Linux
  • https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/quartz-bsp
• Image CI pipeline aimed at developers
  • https://gitlab.com/pgwipeout/quartz64_ci/
• Rockchip U-Boot
  • https://github.com/rockchip-linux/u-boot
• Downstream rockchip-linux kernel tree
  • https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/quartz-bsp/rockchip-linux
• Tianocore EDK II port for UEFI on Quartz64
  • https://github.com/jaredmcneill/quartz64_uefi
• Mainline U-Boot Port by pgwipeout
  • https://gitlab.com/pgwipeout/u-boot-quartz64

Other

• Rockchip-SoC Patchwork Page
  • https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-rockchip/list/
• Rockchip Kernel Mailing List Archive
  • https://lore.kernel.org/linux-rockchip/

Board/SoC Documentation

Booting

Boot Order

The RK3566 boot ROM will search for a valid ID BLOCK in the following order on the support boot media:

• SPI NOR flash
• SPI NAND flash
• eMMC
• SD-Card

... if this fails, the boot ROM will initialize the USB0 port and wait for a connection from the Rockchip flash/boot tools.

Bootloader Flashing

As per pgwipeout's commit message:

• Make a partition named uboot as partition number 1 at 8 MiB to 16 MiB
• dd if=idblock.bin of=/dev/<mmc/sd> seek=64
• dd if=uboot.img of=/dev/<mmc/sd>1