Porting Kernel And Drivers To New CPU
 

Hi
I want to ask about a new project to port the complete Linux Kernel and drivers into a brand new CPU/ hardware platform.

1. Who can do this porting?
Is it Linus Torvald, Marcello, Linux Foundation or a professional developer team?

2. What is the time required for such project?
Is it 6 months, 1 year, 2 years or more?

Thank you.

You have a CPU fab, but no development group?


Anyone can do the porting. You can do it. Anyone you hire can do it.

What is the skill set of the people you have hired? How many people have you hired?

You are welcome.

It depends... 6 months is generous, but with new platforms, things can get messy. I ran a porting project once while the CPU was still in development (FPGAs are fun :P... and very tempermental), and we kept running into hardware bugs which had to be fixed. It helped quite a bit in that we allowed them to work out some bugs they hadn't found yet, but it also slowed down the project considerably. We finished the "port" before the CPU was even done, but it wasn't too stable yet. Once they finished up the CPU design, we were able to clean things up and finish the project. The actual porting time should have been ~3-4 months, but because we were working with unfinished hardware, it ended up taking well over 18 months (with 2 developers), tho I don't remember the exact time span off the top of my head.

There's a lot of if's involved, but you don't need to go to the top of the kernel developers list to find people who can do it. Any decent programmer familiar with linux and the arch you're designing can take a crack at it. That said, there's a large amount of variability of quality between programmers - as with any project, the better the engineers, the better the end result.

I want to hire a famous, professional Linux software company/team for porting the kernel and drivers with a time limit and fixed budget.

I had contacted major IT companies in Asia, but most of them only handle Windows based database/accounting/ERP/CRM applications.

What is the name of famous Linux software development companies?

Redhat, Novell, IBM.

I don't see Redhat or Novell doing new arch work - they're userspace companies that utilize open-source and commoditize it - they're not going to be interested in writing drivers for new specialized devices. If you're talking about a whole new arch, then you'll need compilers & libraries built for it, which isn't a small task itself. If you're thinking about embedded-device linux and drivers to work on it, then Wind River was one of the first Linux companies for embedded devices - I think they've expanded a bit more into general embedded work, not just linux-based anymore. Live Oak Logic is another small company that's started picking up that same kind of work - I think they spawned off Wind River a bit, too. It's all the same engineers, picking up 6-month contracts :).

Funniest thing I've read all day. :)