Introduction

About QorIQ Layerscape Software Development Kit (LSDK)

LSDK is a complete Linux kit for NXP QorIQ ARM-based SoCs and the reference and evaluation boards that are available for them.

It is a hybrid form of a Linux distribution because it combines the following major components to form a complete Linux system.

• NXP firmware components including
1. PPA, a resident EL3 privilege secure firmware for ARMv8A.
2. NXP peripheral firmware components for DPAA1, DPAA2, and PPFE.
• NXP boot loaders. Two are offered:◦U-Boot, based on denx.de plus patches.
1. U-Boot, based on denx.de plus patches.
2. UEFI, based on Tianocore.
3. NXP Linux kernel, based on kernel.org upstream plus patches.
• NXP added user space components.
• Ubuntu standard user space file set (user land), including compilers and cross compiler.

The use of Ubuntu user land is what makes LSDK a hybrid. It is not Ubuntu per se because it uses an NXP kernel, but it still uses Ubuntu user space files. This is possible because NXP ARM SoCs are standards-based so programs like bash and thousands of others run without being recompiled.

The benefit of using Ubuntu user land is the easy availability of thousands of standard Linux user space packages. The experience of using the LSDK is similar to using Ubuntu, but the kernel, firmware, and some special NXP packages are managed separately.

LSDK also permits easy access to the individual components that either originate or are modified by NXP. Source code is made available via git.