Since our last roundup, Collabora has continued working side by side with MediaTek to expand upstream support across both current and upcoming Genio IoT platforms.

And there is a lot to talk about.

Native HDMI 2.0 output is now available for several Genio boards in the upstream Linux kernel, support for the new Genio 520 and Genio 720 platforms is progressing across the kernel, and our work on the upcoming Genio Pro 5100 now reaches beyond Linux into U-Boot and Trusted Firmware-A.

Together, these developments bring the Genio IoT family closer to an out-of-the-box embedded Linux experience built around widely used upstream projects: Trusted Firmware-A and U-Boot for key parts of the boot flow, the mainline Linux kernel, and Debian as the userspace distribution.

This makes MediaTek Genio IoT boards a strong choice for developers looking for a solid, secure, and maintainable embedded platform built around upstream open source software.

The result is a growing family of boards that embedded developers can evaluate, integrate, and maintain using a familiar upstream Linux stack, without having to rebuild their product around large sets of platform-specific kernel patches.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the latest milestones!

MediaTek Genio 510, 700, and 1200 get HDMI 2.0

One of the biggest updates for the MediaTek Genio IoT lineup is the introduction of native HDMI 2.0 support in the upstream Linux kernel.

This applies not only to MediaTek’s own evaluation kits, including the Genio 510 EVK, Genio 700 EVK, and Genio 1200 EVK, but also to boards from MediaTek partners such as the Radxa NIO-12L, Grinn GenioBoard, Ezurio Tungsten, and others.

In practical terms, you can now connect an HDMI 2.0 monitor or television and enjoy high-resolution video, high refresh rates, and audio output using a vanilla Linux kernel.

The Genio 510, Genio 700, and Genio 1200 platforms are based on the MT8370, MT8390, and MT8395 SoCs.

After an extensive review process with the upstream community, the MediaTek HDMI 2.0 controller driver was merged into Linux 6.19. The corresponding device-tree changes enabling HDMI display and audio output on the Genio boards followed in Linux 7.0.

Alongside HDMI support, we have continued contributing bug fixes and device-tree improvements to keep these platforms working as the upstream kernel evolves.

Genio 520 and Genio 720 upstream support moves forward

Upstream support for the Genio 520 and Genio 720 EVKs, based respectively on the MT8371 and MT8391 SoCs, has made significant progress over the past months through the joint work of Collabora and engineers from MediaTek’s IoT and Kompanio teams.

Several of the building blocks needed to get these platforms running are now available in the mainline Linux kernel, including support for eMMC and SD storage, I²C, eFuse access, and the watchdog. MediaTek engineers have also contributed the pin-controller and power-domain support, two essential parts of the initial SoC bring-up.

The next set of features is already moving through upstream review. This includes the system and basic clock controllers, Ethernet GMAC, display and DSI, PCI Express, and UART support, while work on UFS and USB is planned for the second half of the year.

On the board side, the first device-tree patches for the Genio 520 EVK and Genio 720 EVK have also been submitted. They already allow both boards to boot a headless Linux system with serial and connectivity support.

We have also been working on the Airoha AN8801 Ethernet PHY driver used by both EVKs, preparing the way for upstream Ethernet support. Display, GPU, and multimedia enablement are under active development, so there is still plenty more to come for these two platforms.

Genio Pro 5100: going beyond the Linux kernel

Another major part of our recent work is the upcoming Genio Pro 5100 EVK, powered by the MT8894 SoC.

This project marks an important first for our collaboration with MediaTek: our platform enablement work now covers not only the Linux kernel, but also U-Boot and Trusted Firmware-A.

For this platform, U-Boot is used both for the initial boot stage through its Secondary Program Loader, or SPL, and as the main bootloader. Trusted Firmware-A provides the platform runtime services.

Upstreaming the U-Boot and Trusted Firmware-A support brings a larger and more visible part of the Genio Pro 5100 boot software into established open source projects.

Bringing Genio Pro 5100 support to U-Boot

Getting a new SoC to boot with U-Boot is much more than a matter of adding a board configuration.

For the Genio Pro 5100, we first improved the existing UFS and USB controller drivers, then added the missing low-level support needed during the early boot stages, including pin control, clock management, SPMI, and the platform’s power-management ICs.

With those pieces in place, the board can now boot directly from its internal UFS storage, while also supporting microSD cards, USB flash drives, and USB-to-Ethernet adapters.

We also added support for reflashing the internal UFS storage over USB using Fastboot. This makes the platform much easier to bring up, install, recover, and iterate on during development, without requiring an already working operating system on the board.

Linux support built on the MT8196 foundation

On the Linux side, we were able to reuse much of the existing support for the closely related MT8196 SoC.

Most of the initial work therefore focused on adding the device-tree descriptions for the MT8894 SoC and the Genio Pro 5100 EVK.

Some changes were still needed in the pin-controller, clock, and power-domain drivers to support the Ethernet and PCI Express controllers.

With those pieces in place, both wired and wireless networking are working on the board.

The Linux changes are currently the first public part of this work. We also plan to publish and upstream the corresponding U-Boot and Trusted Firmware-A improvements, increasing the amount of upstream open source software used in the platform’s boot flow.

Follow the progress

You can follow the upstream status of the different MediaTek Genio platforms through the following resources:

• MediaTek IoT upstream status
• MediaTek Genio model cheat sheet

These pages contain board and SoC mappings, feature status, development resources, kernel trees, images, and links to the relevant upstream work.

What’s next

There is still plenty happening across the Genio IoT family.

For the Genio 520 and Genio 720, work is continuing on connectivity, display, GPU, storage, USB, and multimedia support.

For the Genio Pro 5100, the next major step is publishing and upstreaming the U-Boot and Trusted Firmware-A work.

Together with MediaTek and the upstream community, we will keep expanding upstream support across the Genio software stack. Stay tuned for more updates!