-----Original Message-----
From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...>
On Behalf Of Andrew Back
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2021 9:39 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: Re: [acrn-users] Supported Hardware help needed

On 17/01/2021 16:10, Lonnie Cumberland wrote:

<snip>

If someone could please give me an idea as to what might be the best
option then I would greatly appreciate it as I want to order one of
these or something that may be recommended ASAP to start working on

things.

I'm not much further along than you and a total ACRN novice, but at the risk
of being corrected, I'd suggest sticking to officially supported hardware. In
which case, of all those you listed, the only two which would seem to be are
options (1) and (2), as they are NUC Series 7 with Intel Core i7 Kaby
Lake/Dawson Canyon (6th row in the first table).

There don't seem to be any NUC7i3, NUC8 series or Beelink models listed as
supported.

I would have the same recommendation than Andrew ;-). The easiest path initially is to stick to HW that is known to work and is being tested. I saw in a subsequent email that you have decided to go for the DNHE version, I also agree this is a good choice :-). It gives you flexibility in that you can easily add an additional disk in there (particularly interesting if you want to dedicate HW to a VM, for a pre-launched or a Real-Time VM for example).

The other nice advantage that NUC has is it's possible to add a serial port to it very easily (something that is not possible with many of the NUCs in general). For details on how to do that, take a look at those links:
- https://projectacrn.github.io/latest/tutorials/using_serial_port.html
- https://simplynuc.com/product/dawson-canyon-rs-232-serial-port-de-9p-expansion/

Note that the use of the serial port is considered a debug feature, if you build ACRN with RELEASE=1 then this is completely disabled. It's nevertheless a great asset when developing and working with ACRN initially!

FWIW I recently had success bringing up the Industry Scenario with an
UP2 Atom x7-E3950 (4GB RAM/32GB eMMC variant). Though I'm still finding
my way around and not managed to access the hypervisor CLI via serial port
yet. I suspect that 4GB RAM may be a bit limiting too.

Nice to hear that!!

4GB may be a bit limiting depending on what User VMs you want to run. But it shouldn't prevent ACRN from running at all. The UP2 board has 2 serial ports, which one are you trying to use?

Have you seen this guide? https://projectacrn.github.io/2.1/tutorials/up2.html

I also picked up a NUC7i7DNBE (board only - no case) to use with ACRN, but
haven't got started with this as yet.

Cheers,

Andrew

--
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com