Linux on the Sega 32X. Who needs hardware synchronization primitives anyway?

6 hours ago

The author ports Linux to the Sega 32X as a way to improve board bringup skills, motivated by past experiences with Android 5.0 Lollipop on a MediaTek phone.
The Sega 32X hardware features two SH2 CPUs and 256KB RAM, requiring creative solutions like using flash cart ROM as RAM and software synchronization for SMP support.
Challenges include toolchain issues, memory constraints, lack of hardware synchronization primitives, and cache coherency, solved with Peterson's algorithm and 68000 as an interrupt router.
The project successfully boots Linux with SMP support, a console display driver, and a minimal rootfs, despite performance limitations and extensive debugging.

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