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BSP Tracker  /  BSP Status / Texas Instruments

TI J721E / TDA4VM

Not for anything resembling a TDA4VM product. Mainline boots the A72s and can receive camera frames, but every accelerator the part is bought for is BSP-only. Mainline here is a bring-up baseline, not a shipping platform.

BSP branch ti-linux-6.18.yLinux 6.18Mainline since v5.3
See all 17 →
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?

Vendor BSP required

BlockIPUpstreamDetail
GPUPowerVR Rogue 8XEmissingThe powervr-rogue binding lists ti,am62-gpu, ti,am62p-gpu and ti,j721s2-gpu. J721E is absent.
NPUC7x DSP + MMA (8 TOPS)missingNo TI entry in drivers/accel. TIDL is proprietary.
ISPVPAC + DMPACmissingNo ISP driver in drivers/media/platform/ti.
CameraCadence CSI2RXupstreamCONFIG_VIDEO_TI_J721E_CSI2RX — the one J721E-named media driver in tree.
Mainline since v5.3, 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. Automotive teams usually track the branch matching a released Processor SDK rather than the newest branch.

Silicon longevity

The vendor publishes no commitment. TI life-cycle policy only.

Vendor source

Yocto

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

Hardware you can buy

Evaluate on. SK-TDA4VM, J721EXSOMXEVM

No third-party production module found. Plan to design the SoC down onto your own board, or choose different silicon.

Notes

No third-party production SoM found. SoM vendors target J721S2/AM68 instead — plan to design the SoC down, or migrate.

What to do about it

TI J721E / TDA4VM: 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 does not yet support the blocks this product needs, so a migration would require upstreaming them first. 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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