Yocto Project Summit 2023.11

Generic ARM64 for Yocto Project HW reference
11-29, 12:35–13:05 (UTC), Nanbield

A generic arm64 OS image will be a new hardware reference image for upstream Yocto Project 4.4 LTS.
This talk will describe what this is, how it will be tested, and current status


The Yocto Project has always had hardware reference machines. You can see them in the meta-yocto-bsp layer.

From the beginning the only ARM reference has been the armv7a (32 bit) Beagle Bone Black. This image is tested on BBB hardware.

For x86-64, a generic x86-64 image is built that can run on most PCs NUC etcs. This image is tested on several hardware machines.

The new generic-arm64 OS image will bring arm64 to partity with the generic-86-64 OS image. It should work on any arm64 hardware that implements the Arm SystemReady specification.

In the 4.4 timeframe we will focus on SystemReady IR (U-boot EFI and Devicetree based) machines with the plans to test on two hardware platforms. SystemReady SR (EDK2 EFI and ACPI based) machines will be testing in later releases.

See also: Slides (441.2 KB)

Ross Burton is a Principal Engineer at Arm, and co-maintains the meta-arm BSP layers.

Bill Mills was a founding member of the Yocto Project advisory committee. He is currently Linaro's advisory committee member. He guided Texas Instruments participation in Yocto Projects from 2010 till 2020.