We had a number of great successes on the Google SoC project. May1937 wrote the following to the google mentor list and I figured it was worth posting here. Many thanks to May1937 and Christiaan for all their efforts:

"The Neuros OSD is an audio/video recording/playback device. The device
runs Linux on a dual core ARM/DSP CPU from TI: the dm320. Neuros is
committed to Open Source, but there is one part of this device which is
not: the DSP code, and thus the codecs which run on it. Neuros chose to
license closed source codecs in order to bring the product to market faster.

My student, Christiaan Baaij, worked this summer to implement an Open
Source "bridge" between the ARM and DSP, which will enable Open Source
codecs to be ported to and run on the DSP side of things. A number of
obstacles were in his path, including: lack of documentation (the docs
for this processor are NDA-only, and not as complete as most public
documentation), no C compiler for the DSP (there is an Open Source
assembler, but the commercial compiler costs thousands of dollars) and
lack of a JTAG/debugger for the DSP.

I am proud to report Christiaan successfully completed his project, in
spite of those challenges. He implemented:

- - A kernel module for loading and running code, as well as passing data
to/from the DSP using DMA transfers.

- - A DSP library, written entirely in c54x assembly, for communicating
with the ARM side kernel module.

- - A set of userland utilities to communicate with the kernel module and
ultimately control the DSP.

Congratulations to Christiaan on successfully completing his project,
and thanks for all his hard work. Thanks also to Google for sponsoring
the program, which was our first Summer of Code.

Adam

PS - Some of the applicants were saying this was the only embedded
project in the Summer of Code. Is that true? I would love to hear about
any other embedded or systems type projects."