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BSP Tracker  /  BSP Status / Texas Instruments

TI AM335x (Sitara)

Mainline for 14 years and mature. You lose only SGX530 3D acceleration (rarely used) and TI's PRU industrial-protocol stacks. The real risk on AM335x is silicon availability, not software.

BSP branch ti-linux-6.18.yLinux 6.18Mainline since v3.6
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Security cliff
Upstream fixes for Linux 6.18 stop in December 2028 — 29 months from now.
The vendor BSP tracks Linux 6.18 on branch ti-linux-6.18.y. After that date no fixes arrive from upstream, and maintaining this kernel becomes your job.

Mainline instead of the vendor BSP

Can you ship mainline instead, and what exactly do you lose if you do?

Mainline is shippable

BlockIPUpstreamDetail
GPUPowerVR SGX530missingThe in-tree Imagination DRM driver covers Rogue-class GPUs only. 3D needs TI's out-of-tree SGX DDK.
VPUnonen/a
NPUnonen/a
PRU-ICSSPRUupstreamIn-tree remoteproc/pru drivers exist; industrial protocol stacks remain TI-supplied.
Mainline since v3.6, verified by bracketing the device tree against the kernel tags: proof 1 · proof 2

Vendor BSP

Repository. https://git.ti.com/cgit/ti-linux-kernel/ti-linux-kernel

Newest branch that actually exists. ti-linux-6.18.y, tracking Linux 6.18. Last commit 2026-07-09.

Cadence. AM335x coverage on the newest branch is NOT verified. The newest ARM32-relevant branch is ti-rt-linux-6.12.y-arm32.

Silicon longevity

The vendor publishes no commitment. Shipping since ~2011. Get a written last-time-buy position from TI before designing it in.

Vendor source

Yocto

Layer. meta-ti. A branch for the current LTS exists: wrynose.

meta-ti has a real wrynose branch; meta-ti-bsp/conf/layer.conf declares LAYERSERIES_COMPAT = "whinlatter wrynose" and the branch still carries am335x-evm.conf and am335x-hs-evm.conf. The open question on AM335x is the kernel branch, not the Yocto layer.

Hardware you can buy

Evaluate on. BeagleBone Black, TI AM335x starter kit

Production modules.

Notes

Whether AM335x machines are still supported on meta-ti wrynose is not verified.

What to do about it

TI AM335x (Sitara): upstream fixes stop December 2028. That leaves 29 months. After that date the kernel this BSP is based on receives no further security fixes from upstream, and maintaining it becomes your team’s responsibility.

There are three options:

  1. Backport the fixes yourself. Your team maintains a kernel that nobody else maintains: tracking each CVE, applying the patch to a tree that has diverged from upstream, and testing the result, for as long as the product ships.
  2. Move to the vendor’s newer BSP. This gives you a few more years of upstream fixes, and it costs a second bring-up: a new kernel, your patches forward-ported, drivers re-validated, and the product re-tested.
  3. Move to mainline. Mainline supports this SoC, so the migration is substantial work but not research. It is the only option that does not have to be repeated when the next vendor kernel reaches end of life.

All three are engineering work, and all three are work we do: reading vendor kernel trees, checking what mainline actually supports, and moving products from one to the other. This page is built from the same work.

Embedded Linux engineering →Talk to us about your BSP

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An email when a kernel series reaches end of life, a board row changes, or a layer picks up a release branch. Nothing else.

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