HCL:HoneyComb LX2K

This system has been certified SystemReady ES - Embedded Server

HoneyComb LX2K

The HoneyComb and ClearFog CX are mini-ITX base boards for CEX7 LX2160 COM Express module based on NXP Layerscape LX2160A (16 Cortex A72) Arm processor.

HoneyComb is a ClearFog CX board without QSFP port.
HoneyComb documentation, including schematics, is available on https://developer.solid-run.com/products/honeycomb-lx2k/

Technical Data

16 ARM Cortex-A72 cores
2x DDR4 SO-DIMM 64 bits dual-channel slots (up to 64GB, 2x 32G)
Up to 100GbE (4 x SFP+)
Full virtualization support
M.2 2240/2280 (PCIe)
MicroSD
eMMC (64GB by default)
4x SATA (gen III)
4x SFP+ ports (2×2 cage – 10GbE each)
1x 1GbE copper (RJ45)
1x PCIe x8 Gen 3.0, open slot (can support x16)
3x USB 3.0
3x USB 2.0
1x QSFP port (40Gbps/4x10Gbps) (ClearFog CX only)

Standard UEFI boot environment

Installing

Please follow the generic instructions found at Installing openSUSE ARM for AArch64 EFI based systems. If you need to update or flash the firmware, please follow instructions below.

Firmware

You can use either UEFI firmware (preferred) or U-Boot to boot the boards from uSD card (or eMMC).

EDK2 UEFI

You can use the UEFI firmware, by:

using a pre-built image from: https://images.solid-run.com/LX2k/lx2160a_uefi (choose the right file to boot from SD or SPI flash, and for the right DDR speed)
building it manually from https://github.com/SolidRun/lx2160a_uefi and edit header to set required options, such as DDR_SPEED, then, run:

INITIALIZE=1 ./runme.sh
./runme.sh

Then, you can flash your uSD card with the UEFI image images/lx2160acex7_*.img.

Finally, please use the EFI installation method from Installing openSUSE ARM for AArch64 EFI based systems.

U-Boot

The easiest way to get u-boot is to flash the uSD card with the image provided by Solid-Run (including u-boot) at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AGdWMSh9lLEYpUeX2dAinQTjzvvi5pMn/view?usp=sharing which contains some firmware and U-Boot.
Boot order from U-Boot is: usb0, mmc0 (SD card), scsi0 (sata), nvme0

Then, please use the EFI image from Installing openSUSE ARM for AArch64 EFI based systems and copy it to USB or SATA storage.

With U-Boot, you will need to provide a DTB as U-Boot does not provide it. Some DTS are available at http://git.armlinux.org.uk/cgit/linux-arm.git/tree/arch/arm64/boot/dts/freescale?h=cex7

git clone git://git.armlinux.org.uk/linux-arm.git --branch=cex7 --depth=1
pushd linux-arm
make defconfig
make freescale/fsl-lx2160a-honeycomb.dtb
# DTB available at arch/arm64/boot/dts/freescale/fsl-lx2160a-honeycomb.dtb
popd

Copy the dtb to boot partition and add the following line for grub menu:

 devicetree /fsl-lx2160a-honeycomb.dtb

and start with ctrl-x.

Known issues

Latest Tumbleweed and Leap 15.6+ switched default IOMMU behavior and now we need to add iommu.passthrough=1 as kernel option, to boot the system - boo#1218682
On-board Ethernet requires kernel 5.14 or later, which means openSUSE Tumbleweed or Leap 15.4. So, you may need to use an USB-to-Ethernet adapter as a workaround until Leap 15.3.
PCIe Gen4 driver for NXP Layerscape SoCs is merged upstream since kernel 5.7-rc1 (https://patchwork.kernel.org/cover/11379765/), so Tumbleweed supports it since kernel 5.7, and Leap 15.x and SLE15-SPx have patches to support it.
uSD read/write line is broken on early hardware revision, so uSD is read-only from the running machine.
There is a "USB to STM32" port for remote management, but there is no image to flash the STM32 so far. This is expected to be released for the end of 2020.
LX2160A-CEX7 errata list
HoneyComb and ClearFog CX errata list