Is Parallella still alive? Should I use it?

[slackmoehrle]

I purchased a few Parallella boards. I see the community seems to be dwindling (or so it seems).

Parabuntu is also dated.

My questions are:
1. Should I still pursue using the boards for my projects? There really isn't anything comparable out there still.

2. How can I take over maintain Parabuntu distro?

Best,
Jason

[Min]

You can build you own Parabuntu, if the latest eSDK works for your Linux distro.

[olajep]

Hi Jason and welcome to the forums!

You're absolutely right, Parabuntu is getting quite dated and someone should do something about it!
No one would be happier than me if you gave it a go.

Incomplete list of things that need to be done:

1. Need to switch from the old abandoned (at least for the armhf arch) linaro 15.04 rootfs to a more recent one.
The Ubuntu base rootfs seems suitable.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Base
Ironically that page is also quite dated, but they have rootfs's for all releases here:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-base/releases/

2. Adjust apt sources to use a more recent Ubuntu release (please go with a LTS)
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is right around the corner, will be released on April 26 if I'm not mistaken.
Maybe it's too much pain and you should go with 16.04, but it's up to you.

3. Update the parallella-linux kernel
Hopefully this will bring in at least the most urgent Meltdown and Spectre fixes
You need to merge in the most recent stable release from ADI:s tree here :
https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/linux


4. Update the FPGA bitstreams
This might not be required but should be done for correctness.

5. Rebuild the ESDK
This might not be required but should be done for correctness (e.g. subtle bugs caused by C++ ABI changes)

The decision on who's the maintaner isn't up to me but IMHO if you pull of creating a good "unofficial community" release then I don't see why you shouldn't at least have commit access to the official repo.
The Parallella project's goal is to become more community driven.
All code is available so nothing's stopping you from creating your own release.

Good luck and have fun,
Ola

[slackmoehrle]

Thanks. I'll work on this. It seems to interesting to ignore.

Do you have advice on how to get started? I've got some LFS knowledge.

[Min]

[olajep]

[bob.pielock]

Having built a few distros from source, I think it might be a fun project to build a 20.04 Ubuntu image. I've been watching a bunch of the Parallella videos on youtube - I originally wanted to purchase a Parallella back in 2014, but had far too many things going on. I've since bought a few Intel 5110P cards, and realized I never purchased a Parallella, but had always wanted one - for various research projects - PS3 / Cell B.E., Xeon Phi, Clustering. Even today I believe the Parallella is one of the most amazing systems developed in the past twenty years, especially after going out and seeing my power bill after having two PHI cards running for a month.

If I have some time over the next few weeks, I'll try to get some kind of system image going, but I need to look at a few things like the expanding filesystem scripts, other details, I have a github and will post a link if I make any progress. I think it would be best to go with a longer supported Ubuntu image, however, looking at e-gcc, and some of the parallella specific stuff, it will be a steep learning curve.

Who would have the best info on 7010/7020 support?

Sorry I'm late to the party, hopefully there are still a few people interested in this project. It's great for development.