Topic: kernel

Version 6.15 of the Linux kernel has been released, which includes a new transport driver for the MCTP stack: MCTP over USB. This transport gives us a higher-speed (but low pin-count) option for MCTP communication, suitable for operations that involve transfers of larger amounts of data, like firmware updates, crashdumps, and extended logging.

Microwatt is an OpenPOWER CPU design to run on relatively small FPGAs. It can run ppc64le Linux. These instructions show how to get it going on an OrangeCrab FPGA dev board.

Following on from the MCTP introduction, this document describes one of the newer features of the MCTP stack: extended addressing. This allows utilities to directly address specific physical endpoints; for example, when no endpoint IDs have been assigned.

At Code Construct, we have been working on support for the Management Component Control Protocol (MCTP) on Linux systems, to the point where it's becoming generally useful for production server environments. To help with that, we have put together a few details in this introductory document.