RDK License

SoC vendors are advised to get into an agreement with RDK Management LLC to obtain the free license so as to use the complete RDK Code base in their platform. More details about license is available at https://rdkcentral.com/licenses/ . Please email info@rdkcentral.com if you have additional questions about licenses or membership

This section will detail the recommended step by step procedure of adopting RDK by a SoC

Product Specifications

The first step to get a fully functional product is to define the product features and see if they meet the standard requirements. See here to know what are all the features available in RDK-V and can implement based on your requirement. SoC can use this as a guide while engineering the RDK SoC platform.

RDKM On-boarding

RDKM provides a collaboration zone facility for SoCs to facilitate easier engineering of RDK based devices. The collaboration zone will help SoCs to work with OEMs, RDKM and any 3^rd party along with a common space to develop & integrate, manage and verify the device. The zone includes facilities for code management, a confluence based RDK Wiki for knowledge management & sharing, a JIRA for tracking activity progress, issues as well as to manage the activities, a test setup to validate devices. The access restrictions implemented will help the collaboration zone to be accessible only for the authorized personnel thereby guarding any sensitive information related to SoC/OEM/Third party.

Roles & Responsibilities

A table explaining the roles & responsibilities of SoC & RDKM in the collaboration zone is given below:

Product Engineering

Once the product features are decided, the device engineering can be started. SoC needs to decide on the hardware layout that incorporates components to the target board. Device will be categorized as Low Profile and High Profile device based on the hardware capabilities. In a low profile device 4k support might be optional but it is expected to have 4k support in high profile device.

Sample Reference Flash Layout (Optional) :

SoC Platform Firmware

SoC can make use of the below details available to start developing a Yocto build to engineer the device firmware builds based on RDK Yocto build setup.

Yocto Manifests

Yocto based RDK builds are flexible enough to easily accommodate SoC / OEM / MSO / third party changes. The starting point for the Yocto builds are a manifest file. The manifest file is an xml file that contains details of the different open embedded Yocto build layers, meta layers , rdk as well as open source components that needs to be fetched during initial stages ( than during bitbake time ) as well as the URL locations from where the data can be pulled. A set of sample manifests that can be used as a template for developing SoC specific manifests are given below

SoC/OEM meta-layer creation

To match the layered structure of Yocto builds, a SoC specific layer is used to include SoC changes and additions. Use the yocto-layer create sub-command to create a new general layer.

$ yocto-layer create mylayer

There shall be separate device (machine) configuration file (.conf) for each device for the particular chip family for which the layer is intended for. The general naming terminology for SoC layer is meta-rdk-SoC-<SoC name>

The device (machine) configuration file shall include corresponding include (.inc) file to get machine configuration details.

MACHINEOVERRIDES=" "

TARGET_ARCH (e.g. "arm")
PREFERRED_PROVIDER_virtual/kernel (Eg:"linux-<chip set name>")
MACHINE_FEATURES (e.g. "apm screen wifi")
KERNEL_IMAGETYPE (e.g. "uImage") 
IMAGE_FSTYPES (e.g. "tar.gz ext4")

SoC meta layer recipes-
=========================================
recipes-bsp
recipes-core
recipes-kernel
recipes-connectivity
recipes-graphics
recipes-support etc

The structure of meta-<SoC name>/recipes-support/<SoC-img-packer>/ is as follows -
=========================================
$ls

<SoC-img-packer-native>.bb         files

TDK and RDK Certification Suite Package

RDKM offers an in-house Test & certification suite that facilitates SoCs to get their IP Set-top product certified as RDK Compliant device.

Certification program includes testing which validates the RDK stack on the device with defined test suite called as RDK Certification Test Suite. It is mandatory to go through this program in order to brand user's platform as RDK compliant product.

Certification suite is available at RDK IP Set-top Product Certification(only for RDK licensee) and for TDK test app please refer TDK-V Documentation(only for RDK licensee).

SDK Releases

Once the RDK bring-up in SoC is completed, the vendor needs to plan on the delivery of the software to OEM vendors. This usually happens in 2 ways:

HAL + SDK binary

In this approach will make use of the RDK Artifactory server. Artifactory server is a Repository Manager that functions as a single access point organizing all the binary resources including proprietary libraries, remote artifacts and other 3rd party resources. It is a secure and restricted server, only collaboration members will have access to this server. SoC secure information like secure components such as PlayReady, widevine and Dolby libraries etc. can be hosted in Artifactory server.

SoC vendor can define a HAL layer, share the source of HAL & yocto meta layer that can be stored in RDK CMF Git repository (which will be shared only  to authorized OEM vendors who will work in collaboration with the SoC vendor), share the SDK binary that can be stored in RDK Artifactory (which will be shared only to authorized OEM vendors who will work in collaboration with the SoC vendor) and then publish necessary documentation on how to build the SoC SDK. SoC vendor can use the git/ Artifactory for periodic updated (for releases) or for bug fixes. All the source code, binary and documentation will be strictly access restricted and access will be allowed only for authorized personnel by SoC vendor.

Artifactory server can be accessed by adding the Artifactory details and login credentials in the .netrc file, just like it is done for normal git repositories. A sample is given below:

machine your.artifactory.host
login YOUR_ARTIFACTORY_USERNAME
password YOUR_PASSWORD_OR_KEY_OR_TOKEN

Complete source code

In this approach, SoC vendor can define a HAL layer, share the source of HAL , yocto meta layer and SDK source code that can be stored in RDK CMF Git repository( which will be shared only  to authorized OEM vendors who will work in collaboration with the SoC vendor )  and then publish necessary documentation on how to build the SoC SDK. SoC vendor can use the git for periodic updated ( for releases ) or for bug fixes. All the source code and documentation will be strictly access restricted and access will be allowed only for authorized personnel by SoC vendor.

For both approaches, the RDKM collaboration zone will be used with strict access restrictions.

Collaboration with OEMs

After a successful bring up of RDK on SoC platform, the next step will be to allow OEMs to work with SoCs to get a device based on the SoC platform. RDKM offers collaboration space for SoCs which would help SoCs to collaborate with OEM and RDK teams (as well as any 3rd party) in their journey to engineer a successful RDK product. RDKM collaboration zone includes features like (but not limited to) CMF facility to maintain build manifests as well as SoC/OEM specific code, SoC SDK artifact storage facility, JIRA & RDK Wiki spaces, integration with Test & Certification suites, monthly & release tagging etc.

Please refer RDKM On-boarding for more details on facilities available for SoCs and OEMs as part of collaboration zone . In short, it will include:

• Access restricted Git repositories and Artifactory servers
• Access restricted Confluence and JIRA spaces for Management and Documentation
• Access to RDKM support as well as extended documentation
• Access to test & certification support