3. We have currently two new machines with loongson 3a processors to
test. It will take a bit of time to finally get a working kernel on
these, but that would also decrease build-times quite much.
When do you expect them to be usable?
Depends on your definition of useable.
I'm currently in the process to get the kernel building and trying to
get the patches into upstream kernel. Besides of that, the hardware is
useable (the usual auto-power-on-patch is required as well, but that's
just a few days for doing it mechanically). However, currently with
only the factory kernel (which doesn't meet my definition of useable,
and I think also not yours). I suspect that I'm just a few pitfalls
away from getting this done, but nothing I could put say "takes this
many days". I'm also just trying since Saturday, so in the very early
stages and in discussion with upstream and vendor.