[HoneyComb] NVIDIA's commitment towards continued support of hardware partners? - Adam General

As it appears they have had either a change of heart or the community is large enough to have a voice..
Mar 16 2011 at 12:07 AM #1
UPDATE 13 APRIL 2011
A lot has been read into a very short post about a Tegra development kit. I'd like to clear up a few points.
First, nothing changes in what we’re delivering to the open source community or customers. NVIDIA will continue to post the Tegra kernel to kernel.org and publish our Android code to our public git servers. Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners. We will continue to do this and nothing about these processes has changed.
For our partners' Android devices, NVIDIA provides support until the hardware partner chooses to no longer support the device. So, for instance, NVIDIA will support the Xoom on all versions of Android Motorola requests until Motorola ceases to support the Xoom. The same goes for ViewSonic with the G-Tablet, Notion Ink with the Adam, Acer with the Iconia, LG with the Optimus 2X and so on.
In relation to my original reply, that was a response to a specific question about a Tegra 250 Development Kit. Given the confusion, we will work with owners of Tegra 250 Development Kits individually to determine their needs. The term "Harmony" is an internal codename for the Tegra 250 Development Kit. It is not a tablet reference design. Each shipping tablet is a custom design with varying hardware components and requires a custom OS image from the OEM who made the tablet.
Finally, while we cannot support or give out third party peripheral drivers or provide the Android 3.0 source before Google does, we do want to explore whether we can assist the open source ROM makers. We will be reaching out to them today.
UPDATE 12 APRIL 2011:
Sorry folks looks like I caused a bit of confusion. Since this is a developer forum my comments
were targeted at Tegra Honeycomb developers and for this we’d like to focus on Ventana. For shipping or production products, customers should contact the device makers directly for OS support plans. They are responsible for the OS shipping on their device.
In relation to our linux kernel git repository, NVIDIA will continue to provide full open-source support for all of our kernel components and will push more of that upstream over time.
ORIGINAL 16 MARCH 2011:
NVIDIA is only supporting the Ventana platform for android releases going forward. At the moment we have released Froyo and Gingerbread OS images for Ventana and will release Honeycomb after Google has done so.
Andrew Edelsten
Tegra Developer Relations
NVIDIA Corporation
SOURCE(s):
http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/honeycomb-harmony
http://notioninkhacks.com/index.php/2011/04/12/huge-problem-on-the-honeycomb-front/
http://conclave.notionink.com/showt...mb-on-Harmony-NVIDIA-s-Official-Stance&p=1281

Related

[STICKY][REF] Honeycomb Info - The Only Post - UPDATED 5/14/11

This is a preemptive note about posting any new threads asking "when will honeycomb come to the gTablet?" or "why can't we do this because the Nook has it?" or "why isn't the sky blue today?"
Honeycomb is not available for the gTablet yet for the following reasons:
1. source hasn't even been released by Google yet
2. any port based on the SDK doth not a Honeycomb ROM make
3. we do not even have libraries (or source) from nVidia for Gingerbread yet
Until we have source from Google and nVidia, we won't have workable Honeycomb. There will be some ports, but until one of the above happens, we are not going to be getting Honeycomb. Best case is 30 days from now (roughly the end of March).
Any post asking about Honeycomb will be promptly closed and/or deleted.
This isn't about discouraging discussion about Honeycomb on the gTablet - it's about stopping the endless flaming and abuse and posting and complaining about something that has been answered multiple times - thus taking away from other progress and endeavors.
UPDATE 3/18/11 - We now have access to the Gingerbread libs needed for hardware acceleration, but in order to use them a complete rework of the github repo is required and a year's worth of merges and cleanups would need to be done. Slow going and no ETA.
UPDATE 4/12/11 - http://www.androidcentral.com/nvidia-stop-supporting-harmony-platform-past-froyo
UPDATE 4/13/11 - http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/honeycomb-harmony#comment-6191
UPDATE 13 APRIL 2011
A lot has been read into a very short post about a Tegra development kit. I'd like to clear up a few points.
First, nothing changes in what we’re delivering to the open source community or customers. NVIDIA will continue to post the Tegra kernel to kernel.org and publish our Android code to our public git servers. Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners. We will continue to do this and nothing about these processes has changed.
For our partners' Android devices, NVIDIA provides support until the hardware partner chooses to no longer support the device. So, for instance, NVIDIA will support the Xoom on all versions of Android Motorola requests until Motorola ceases to support the Xoom. The same goes for ViewSonic with the G-Tablet, Notion Ink with the Adam, Acer with the Iconia, LG with the Optimus 2X and so on.
In relation to my original reply, that was a response to a specific question about a Tegra 250 Development Kit. Given the confusion, we will work with owners of Tegra 250 Development Kits individually to determine their needs. The term "Harmony" is an internal codename for the Tegra 250 Development Kit. It is not a tablet reference design. Each shipping tablet is a custom design with varying hardware components and requires a custom OS image from the OEM who made the tablet.
Finally, while we cannot support or give out third party peripheral drivers or provide the Android 3.0 source before Google does, we do want to explore whether we can assist the open source ROM makers. We will be reaching out to them today.
UPDATE 5/10/11 - There is now a pretty hacked together port of HC that has been ported to the gTablet - it is a mashup of other, authorized by Google tablets which have stock HC on them, and thrown together for Vega, Adam and gTablet. A lot doesn't work; it is not feature perfect..... it is only recommended for testing type users who are familiar with nvflash etc. and it is not built from source specifically for our devices. It is by no means official, nor is it what would probably be called "stable" - but it is as close as we've come to HC on the gTablet. Here is the post that has more information: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1065220
UPDATE 5/10/11 - Per Google I/O's Fireside chat today there will be no Honeycomb source released. Ever. You'll have to wait for Ice Cream Sandwich which will be out in Q4 2011.
UPDATE 5/14/11 - The ADAM/VEGA/ZPAD/GTAB port of the mashup Transformer/Iconia/Xoom Honeycomb systems is coming along nicely. See the above thread for more information. Good work to the devs involved in that project.

cyanogenmod 7 FINAL BUILD gingerbread tegra harmony release

Wrong: CYANOGENMOD 7 RELEASED, HARMONY SUPPORT, DIDN'T NOTICE ANY POSTS REFERING TO IT
Right: CM7 was released, with Harmony support.
Wrong: SHAME THAT NVIDIA ARE NOT SUPPORTING DEVELOPMENT FOR HARMONY CHIP FROM 2.2 ONWARDS IF REPORTS ARE TRUE
Right: It's a shame that nVidia isn't supporting Harmony developers from 2.2 onwards, if reports are true.
Mod Edit: All caps is annoying. Please don't use it. Thanks.
Yes if you actually look at the other CM7 threads you will see that the Vega changes have been added to the official tree now.....
and how can you go and say that we have cm7 (2.3) and then complain about the lack of nvidia support beyond 2.2 in the same post, completely contradicts itself....
but doesnt the tegra 2 already power a bunch of honeycomb tablets already?
mintvilla said:
but doesnt the tegra 2 already power a bunch of honeycomb tablets already?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there are two types of tegra 2 boards, Harmony which the vega has supported to android 2.2 and Ventana which the xoom has, supported beyond 2.2
Useless posts removed, OP reformatted. All caps is just annoying.
Also, thank you Lennyuk for your expertise. I actually wasn't aware of the two Tegra 2 revisions. What are the differences between Harmony and Ventana?
willverduzco said:
Useless posts removed, OP reformatted. All caps is just annoying.
Also, thank you Lennyuk for your expertise. I actually wasn't aware of the two Tegra 2 revisions. What are the differences between Harmony and Ventana?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
as far as I know there is not actually a great deal of differences between the two, I think the ventana board has an extra GPU slot, that might be it.
Lennyuk said:
as far as I know there is not actually a great deal of differences between the two, I think the ventana board has an extra GPU slot, that might be it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Interesting. I wonder why that would be since these SOCs don't have modular components, with the GPU being directly integrated into the SOC itself... Weird.
UPDATE 12 APRIL 2011:
Sorry folks looks like I caused a bit of confusion. Since this is a developer forum my comments
were targeted at Tegra Honeycomb developers and for this we’d like to focus on Ventana. For shipping or production products, customers should contact the device makers directly for OS support plans. They are responsible for the OS shipping on their device.
In relation to our linux kernel git repository, NVIDIA will continue to provide full open-source support for all of our kernel components and will push more of that upstream over time.
Andrew Edelsten
Tegra Developer Relations
NVIDIA CorporationTop
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Interesting update something for developers to get teeth into sometime
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Mod Edit: All caps is annoying. Please don't use it. Thanks.[/QUOTE]
haha to right
UPDATE 13 APRIL 2011
A lot has been read into a very short post about a Tegra development kit. I'd like to clear up a few points.
First, nothing changes in what we’re delivering to the open source community or customers. NVIDIA will continue to post the Tegra kernel to kernel.org and publish our Android code to our public git servers. Additionally, we will continue to make our BSP (codecs, GPU driver etc) available to all our hardware partners. We will continue to do this and nothing about these processes has changed.
For our partners' Android devices, NVIDIA provides support until the hardware partner chooses to no longer support the device. So, for instance, NVIDIA will support the Xoom on all versions of Android Motorola requests until Motorola ceases to support the Xoom. The same goes for ViewSonic with the G-Tablet, Notion Ink with the Adam, Acer with the Iconia, LG with the Optimus 2X and so on.
In relation to my original reply, that was a response to a specific question about a Tegra 250 Development Kit. Given the confusion, we will work with owners of Tegra 250 Development Kits individually to determine their needs. The term "Harmony" is an internal codename for the Tegra 250 Development Kit. It is not a tablet reference design. Each shipping tablet is a custom design with varying hardware components and requires a custom OS image from the OEM who made the tablet.
Finally, while we cannot support or give out third party peripheral drivers or provide the Android 3.0 source before Google does, we do want to explore whether we can assist the open source ROM makers. We will be reaching out to them today.
*
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Caps from original nvidia forum post.
Stop being so anal anyway
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
Can anyone translate this for me? Are we (Advent Vega users) getting the Tegra 2 update? And is this the one for Honeycomb?
From what I can tell, Yes. Or am I reading this wrong?
GaiusSensei said:
Can anyone translate this for me? Are we (Advent Vega users) getting the Tegra 2 update? And is this the one for Honeycomb?
From what I can tell, Yes. Or am I reading this wrong?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is no "Tegra 2" Update
You are getting confused.
Basically when the Tegra2 boards were given to manufacturers they had one of two designs
Harmony which the vega has
or Ventana which newer tablets have
These are not set in stone, they were just designs that then get built to specific needs by each manufacturer.
Nvidia are not releasing their own stock images beyond android 2.2 for Harmony however they have made it very clear that it is down to each manufacturer to do this, Nvidia will support the manufacturers for as long as they want to continue service on each device.
Advent do not yet know if the manufacturer (Shuttle) will give us a HC rom, however at least 2 other clones of the Vega have confirmed it, so it looks promising.
Point of View is supposed to deliver us a fresh HC ROM, I would be really thankful!
All I need is a rom w/o cellphone stuff, just tablet things to work always with optimizations and no slow downs.. That's why I bought a tablet with tegra... but after news like this, customers like me get pretty sad and will regret buying another device from them. Gz;

[DOWNLOAD] Official unused Cypress Touchscreen Drivers with Source Code

NOTE: These drivers CAN NOT BE INSTALLED! These drivers were also NOT used by the Cyanogen Team for porting purposes as by using these drivers, you would not be able to use webOS. I am only posting these drivers as evidence, and for research/educational purposes, and it is in the DEVELOPMENT category as such.
Greetings,
This morning's news article here on XDA revealed some newly released information regarding the fact that HP actually installs Android on every Touchpad device during the manufacturing for testing purposes, and that the recent devices brought to light that were bought preinstalled with Android 2.2 were devices that for some reason were not flashed with webOS after the testing process. Now that the Cyanogen Team has officially released the alpha for CM7.1 for the Touchpad, and the news of HP's doings with the Touchpad has come to light, I feel that I should release this.
In late August, multiple people who were working on porting Android to the HP Touchpad were sent an anonymous email containing a zip (attached) which contained a copy of an email, along with Android touchscreen drivers. Based on the contents of the email, and other information we had collected, we determined that the email was from a Cypress Semiconductors employee, and we presumed that it was leaked to us by a Cypress or possibly HP insider. Our presumptions were even more reinforced once we examined the source code of the drivers that was included, which was VERY advanced as it was much more accurate than the webOS Touchscreen drivers that was shipped with the device. From this, we have determined that most likely these drivers were used for testing the hardware during the manufacturing process, as stated in the email.
You may ask why does this matter... the fact is that HP has continued to deny that they do not have any Android build for the Touchpad and they are not responsible for the devices shipped with Android 2.2. While I am almost positive that HP did not have the intent to distribute these devices, the fact is that they did get out... and they were not just found in a dumpster, or it somehow "got legs and walked out of the factory"... HP sold these devices. They first sold them to retailers (Best Buy and Walmart), and at least three of these were confirmed to have been sold to consumers (with a possible fourth device being investigated by us today). So although HP did not intentionally release these devices, these devices have been sold at retail stores in different parts of the US... and HP still has not released the kernel source code.
The GNU General Public License is the license that the Linux Kernel is under, and thus all derivatives must be licensed under... including webOS and Android. Basically, the GPL requires that any changes made to a the Linux kernel source code must be re released to anyone requesting it if whatever it is that uses that kernel is released to the public... regardless of intention. We know that HP released these devices, and we know that HP uses Android for testing of the devices, and that they are violating the GPL by not releasing the kernel source code.
Anyways, what you have all been waiting for... Here is a copy of the attachment sent to us anonymously by the presumed Cypress/HP insider. http://trsohmers.com/files/touchpad/CY8CTMA395_Android_Drivers.zip

New kernels from nVidia

I don't know if this could help in developing better roms, but I found this on nVidia developer site: http://developer.nvidia.com/linux-tegra.
It seems they released the kernel 3.1 for Tegra...
CYA
Not very useful for android but it might be usefull for lilsteves ubuntu
Backporting their tegra-specific stuff from this source drop to the upstream sources for Android shouldn't be hard, but it would be a futile exercise since their closed-source drivers shipped with ICS would be 99% incompatible with the resulting kernel ABI (and those shipped with L4T won't work with the Android userland).
The only thing that give us a glimpse of hope is that they're dropping support for the obsolete Harmony reference design and instead they're focusing their efforts on Ventana (for Tegra-2) and Cardhu (for Tegra-3).

Ubuntu dev preview for Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4 coming next week

In January, Canonical teased a version of the Ubuntu software for Galaxy Nexus smartphones would be released sometime in February.
The new operating system was announced just before CES, revealing Canonical's intent to bring the full range of desktop capabilities to compatible smartphones.
Canonical has primarily used the Galaxy Nexus as its test device thus far, and it wasn't that shocking to learn a developer version of Ubuntu would be handed out so soon.
However, the developer just revealed a version of Ubuntu for Nexus 4 would arrive with the Galaxy Nexus edition, which comes as a bit of a nice surprise.
Preview of promise
Set to arrive on Feb. 21, the touch developer preview of Ubuntu for both Nexus smartphones will provide images and open source code for more savvy users to mess around with while they wait for a completed version.
The idea is to give Ubuntu enthusiasts and developers a chance to see what the OS has to offer, and give an early lead on potential app creation for the smartphone software.
Canonical will also release tools to help users flash their existing devices to the developer preview, which would allow them to stay up to date with the most current version.
Attendees of Mobile World Congress can bring their Galaxy Nexus and Nexus 4 smartphones to the Canonical booth, where the developer will flash the devices themselves.
Additionally at MWC, Canonical will have a variety of Ubuntu devices on display (including a possible tablet), though the actual proprietary phones aren't expected to arrive until October.
"Our platform supports a wide range of screen sizes and resolutions. Developers who have experience bringing up phone environments will find it relatively easy to port Ubuntu to current handsets," said Canonical's Pat McGowan in a statement.
"We look forward to adding support for additional devices for everyday testing and experimentation."
The group has also created downloadable app design guidelines, giving potential developers the power to create for the full range of Ubuntu platforms.
Though iOS and Android have dominated the market thus far, there's plenty of room for a possible third option as Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 have yet to assert themselves in the marketplace.
Whether that OS is Ubutnu will largely depend on how quickly and easily users are able to assimilate the open source software.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2149705 No need for two threads

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