I am working on getting support added for a device that uses the Cavium octeon3 CPU. Currently, I've got it stored into the target/linux/octeon/ with the Edgerouter and Edgerouter Lite devices.
The problem is, the ER/ERLite use the octeonplus CPU_TYPE, and I really would like to use octeon3, since it specifically checks for the generation of Octeon in the kernel (arch/mips/kernel/cpu-probe.c in static inline void cpu_probe_cavium())
I can do this by creating a SUBTARGET for my device, so I can outline a different CPU_TYPE (and, in reality, I think that's really all I need to change), but I've been advised this puts undue strain on the buildbots, and shouldn't be done unless it is really necessary.
The other option would be to start a octeon3 target different from octeon, but I'm not sure how prevalent the octeon3 SoC is.
I need guidance on how to proceed, and would appreciate any that can be given.