New post: Microchip Laguna support

Signed-off-by: Joachim Wiberg <troglobit@gmail.com>

Author: troglobit

_posts/2026-09-25-microchip-laguna.md

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+---
+title: Microchip Laguna Support
+author: troglobit
+date: 2026-09-25 10:00:00 +0200
+categories: [showcase]
+tags: [boards]
+image:
+  path: /assets/img/laguna-evb.png
+  alt: Microchip EV23X71A (Laguna) evaluation board
+  show_in_post: false
+---
+
+Twenty-eight ports, one lonely Cortex-A53, and a switch core that does TSN +
+FRER and HSR/PRP in hardware.  Say hello to Microchip *Laguna*, the LAN969x
+family, now supported in Infix via the [EV23X71A][1] evaluation board!
+
+![](/assets/img/laguna-evb.png){: #fig1}
+_**Figure 1**: Microchip EV23X71A, a.k.a. the Laguna EVB.  Twenty-four RJ45s
+and four SFP+ cages along the bottom edge._
+
+### Hardware
+
+The EVB is a big, green, no-nonsense board built around a LAN9696RED, the 60
+Gbps member of the family, where *RED* stands for hardware RedBox support
+(HSR/PRP).  As eval boards usually go, Microchip have crammed all the things
+into this one, but the SoC comes in [many variants][6].  Common to all of them
+is the built-in single Cortex-A53 @ 1 GHz.  The EVB also has 1 GiB DDR4, 4 GiB
+eMMC, and 2 MiB QSPI NOR flash.  The latter is interesting if you want to try
+out Microchip's [VelocityDRIVE][7], have a look at it!
+
+The many ports are what you came for:
+
+- 24 x 1 GbE copper, six QSGMII quad PHYs in a neat row
+- 4 x 10 GbE SFP+
+- 1 x 1 GbE RGMII management port
+
+It is the smaller sibling of the [SparX-5i][2], and the same Linux `sparx5`
+switchdev driver takes care of both, so everything you already know about
+bridging and VLANs in Infix works just as expected, all fully offloaded to the
+switch core, no CPU cycles involved.
+
+### Support Status
+
+The EVB starts out as Tier 3 in Infix, keeping the SparX-5i company.  That
+sounds modest, and it is, but only because an evaluation board rarely ends
+up in a rack.  What works today:
+
+- switch core and SerDes, all 29 ports, with switchdev offload
+- eMMC, I²C (including the SFP mux), SPI, and USB host
+- watchdog, temperature sensor, status and SFP LEDs
+- our own boot chain, from BL2 all the way to an A/B slot on the eMMC
+
+That last bullet deserves a moment.  The U-Boot the board ships with cannot
+boot Infix from eMMC, so we built our own FIP (Trusted Firmware + U-Boot)
+from Microchip's trees.  Along the way we tripped over a boot ROM erratum
+that made roughly one build in a hundred fail to authenticate, which was
+*great* fun to track down.  The whole story is in the [board README][3].
+
+Not there yet: TSN queueing (time aware shaping, PSFP) and HSR/PRP offload.
+The hardware is more than ready, it's our turn now.
+
+### Getting Started
+
+Laguna support ships with the upcoming v26.09 release, and until then in
+the [latest][4] builds.  The bootloader is built with `laguna_boot_defconfig`
+and the rest is the standard aarch64 image, combined for eMMC using
+`utils/mkimage.sh`.  The [board README][3] walks you through it all:
+boot mode strapping, installing the FIP, netbooting, and (just in case)
+debricking.
+
+### Coming Soon: Novarq Tactical-1000
+
+Why all this effort on an EVB?  Because it is the reference design for real
+products, and the first one is already on the bench.  The [Novarq
+Tactical-1000][5] is basically a cut-down Laguna EVB in a box: same 24 + 4 +
+1 port layout, a LAN9696TSN, 2 GiB RAM, and a CPU fan that looks suspiciously
+like it was borrowed from a Raspberry Pi 5.
+
+![](/assets/img/novarq-tactical-1000.webp){: #fig2}
+_**Figure 2**: Novarq Tactical-1000, the business end.  Photo: Novarq._
+
+This one is going straight to **Tier 1**, i.e., included in the default
+builds and tested in our regression test system.  
+Stay tuned!
+
+[1]: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/ev23x71a
+[2]: https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/00002854B.pdf
+[3]: https://github.com/kernelkit/infix/tree/main/board/aarch64/microchip-ev23x71a
+[4]: https://github.com/kernelkit/infix/releases/tag/latest
+[5]: https://novarq.com/pages/tactical-1000
+[6]: https://github.com/kernelkit/infix/tree/main/board/aarch64/microchip-ev23x71a#switch-core
+[7]: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/software-library/velocitydrive-sp