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Linux® Kernel - 5.10

Last modified by Microchip on 2026/01/09 08:12

Linux 5.10 for MPU source code

The Linux® kernel for Microchip Arm®-based MPUs (aka AT91) is distributed as a GIT tree hosted on GitHub® as a fork of the official Linus Torvalds' git tree. The objective of the Microchip Linux team is to integrate all the AT91-related material in the official Linux Kernel.
Before completing this inclusion process, which can take time, this website provides the Linux4SAM Linux Kernel git tree for AT91 devices at:

https://github.com/linux4sam/linux-at91/tree/linux-5.10-at91
and now on:
https://github.com/linux4microchip/linux/tree/linux-5.10-mchp

Tags

linux4microchip-2021.10 tag

Enhancements are added on top of the official v5.10 Linux kernel tag where most of the Microchip SoC features are already supported. Note as well that we re-integrate each and every stable kernel release on top of this Long Term Support (LTS) kernel revision. This means that each v5.10.x version is merged in our branch.

Here is a little summary of the main additional enhancements:

  • Integration of stable kernel updates up to v5.10.80
  • WILC: Update driver and firmware to 15.6. Addition of WPA3 security support
  • WILC: New power sequencing driver
  • Addition of the new SAMA5D29 SoC as part of the SAMA5D2 family
  • I2C: bus recovery mechanism and digital filter for SAMA5D2 ICP and SAMA5D27 SOM1-EK boards
  • Crypto: Import enhancements from Linux Mainline. They fix corner cases for few cipher modes for the crypto drivers: AES (ECB, CBC, CFB, OFB, CTR, XTS) and DES (OFB) modes

linux4sam-2021.04 tag

Enhancements are added on top of the official v5.10 Linux kernel tag where most of the Microchip SoC features are already supported. Note as well that we re-integrate each and every stable kernel release on top of this Long Term Support (LTS) kernel revision. This means that each v5.10.x version is merged in our branch.

Here is a little summary of the main additional enhancements:

  • Integration of stable kernel updates up to v5.10.50
  • Update Wireless Internet Link Controller
     (WILC) driver and firmware to 15.5
  • SOC: added SAM9x60 SiPs
  • Image Sensor Controller (ISC): rework and separate pipeline between old and new hardware revisions
  • Crypto engines:
    • fix corner cases for atmel-aes XTS, ECB, CBC, CFB OFB and CTR modes
    • fix corner cases for atmel-tdes ECB, CBC, CFB and OFB modes
  • SPI-NOR: OTP support, global unlock support for microchip's sst26vf064b and fixes for non-uniform erase
  • QSPI: disable IP at suspend time
  • NAND: updated ecc_stats.corrected counter
  • SPI: fix CS and initialization bug, reduce spinlock usage, switch to transfer_one() method
  • SDHCI: add GPIO card detect support to improve power management
  • USB device controller (gadget) : remove endpoints from device tree
  • Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C): fix bus recovery mechanism for SAMA5D4
  • Inter-IC Sound (I2S): fix usage of capture and playback at the same time
  • Pulse Width Modulation (PWM): atmel-tcb-pwm: switched to new bindings, fixed sama5d2 support, added atomic support, removed atmel-tclib
  • PIT64: add suspend/resume support
  • Real-Time Clock (RTC): add correction support for SAMA5D2 and SAMA5D4
  • MCP16502: add ramp delay support and fixes

Getting Kernel sources

To get the source code, you have to clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/linux4sam/linux-at91.git
Cloning into 'linux-at91'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 8511469, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (269/269), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (85/85), done.
remote: Total 8511469 (delta 196), reused 236 (delta 184), pack-reused 8511200
Receiving objects: 100% (8511469/8511469), 2.44 GiB | 16.48 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (7162200/7162200), done.
Updating files: 100% (70674/70674), done.
$ cd linux-at91

The source code has been taken from the master branch which is pointing on the latest branch we use.

hand Note that you can also add this Linux4SAM repository as a remote GIT repository to your usual Linux git tree. It will save you a lot of bandwidth and download time:

$ git remote add linux4sam https://github.com/linux4sam/linux-at91.git
$ git remote update linux4sam
Fetching linux4sam
From https://github.com/linux4sam/linux-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-2.6.39-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-2.6.39-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-3.10-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-3.10-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-3.15-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-3.15-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-3.18-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-3.18-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-3.4.9-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-3.4.9-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-3.6.9-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-3.6.9-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-4.1-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-4.1-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-4.4-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-4.4-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-4.9-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-4.9-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-4.14-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-4.14-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-4.19-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-4.19-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-5.4-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-5.4-at91
 * [new branch]                linux-5.10-at91 -> linux4sam/linux-5.10-at91
 * [new branch]                master     -> linux4sam/master

If you want to use another branch, you can list them and use one of them by doing this:

$ git branch -r
  origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  origin/linux-2.6.39-at91
  origin/linux-3.10-at91
  origin/linux-3.15-at91
  origin/linux-3.18-at91
  origin/linux-3.4.9-at91
  origin/linux-3.6.9-at91
  origin/linux-4.1-at91
  origin/linux-4.4-at91
  origin/linux-4.9-at91
  origin/linux-4.14-at91
  origin/linux-4.19-at91
  origin/linux-5.4-at91
  origin/linux-5.10-at91
  origin/master
$ git checkout origin/linux-5.10-at91 -b linux-5.10-at91
Branch linux-5.10-at91 set up to track remote branch linux-5.10-at91 from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'linux-5.10-at91'

Configure and Build the Linux kernel

Now you have to configure the Linux kernel according to your hardware. We have two default configuration at91 SoC in arch/arm/configs

arch/arm/configs/at91_dt_defconfig
arch/arm/configs/sama5_defconfig
  • at91_dt_defconfig: for SAM9 (ARM926) series chips
  • sama5_defconfig: for SAMA5 series chips

Now we Configure and Build kernel for board:

  $ make ARCH=arm sama5_defconfig
  HOSTCC  scripts/basic/fixdep
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/conf.o
  SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.c
  SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.lex.c
  SHIPPED scripts/kconfig/zconf.hash.c
  HOSTCC  scripts/kconfig/zconf.tab.o
  HOSTLD  scripts/kconfig/conf
#
# configuration written to .config
#

At this step, you can modify default configuration using the menuconfig

  $ make ARCH=arm menuconfig

Now, in the menuconfig dialog, you can easily add or remove some features. Once done, Move to <Exit> with arrows and press this button hitting the Enter key to exit from this screen.

Build the Linux kernel image, before you build you need set up the cross compile toolchain, check this section.

  $ make ARCH=arm

[..]

  Kernel: arch/arm/boot/Image is ready
  Kernel: arch/arm/boot/zImage is ready

Now you have an usable compressed kernel image zImage.

If you need an uImage you can run this additional step:

  make ARCH=arm uImage LOADADDR=0x20008000

[..]

  Kernel: arch/arm/boot/zImage is ready
  UIMAGE  arch/arm/boot/uImage
Image Name:   Linux-5.10.50-linux4sam-2021.04
Created:      Wed Aug  4 14:57:59 2021
Image Type:   ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed)
Data Size:    4891024 Bytes = 4776.39 KiB = 4.66 MiB
Load Address: 20008000
Entry Point:  20008000
  Kernel: arch/arm/boot/uImage is ready
  make ARCH=arm dtbs

[..]

  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-kizbox2-2.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-kizbox3-hs.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-nattis-2-natte-2.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d27_som1_ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d27_wlsom1_ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d2_icp.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d2_ptc_ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d2_xplained.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d3_xplained.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-dvk_som60.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-gatwick.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-tse850-3.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-wb50n.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/sama5d31ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/sama5d33ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/sama5d34ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/sama5d35ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/sama5d36ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/sama5d36ek_cmp.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d4_ma5d4evk.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d4_xplained.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-sama5d4ek.dtb
  DTC     arch/arm/boot/dts/at91-vinco.dtb

[..]

If the building process is successful, the final images can be found under arch/arm/boot/ directory.

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