board: add support for Banana Pi BPI-R4

Add board support for the BananaPi BPI-R4 router board, based on the
MediaTek MT7988A (Filogic 880) SoC with quad-core Cortex-A73 CPU.

The BPI-R4 is the successor to the BPI-R3 but uses entirely different
silicon: the internal switch runs at 2.5 GbE per port, the two SFP+
uplinks use native USXGMII at up to 10 Gbps, and WiFi is provided by
a MediaTek MT7996E PCIe module supporting tri-band WiFi 7 (2.4/5/6 GHz).

Two board variants, BPI-R4-2g5 and BPI-R4P, replace one SFP+ cage with
a 2.5 GbE RJ45 port (using the MT7988A internal 2.5G PHY); the R4P adds
an optional PoE daughterboard on that port.  Both use the upstream
mt7988a-bananapi-bpi-r4-2g5 device tree.

Interfaces:
- Standard R4:  eth1 (gmac1/sfp2 LAN cage) → sfp2, eth2 (gmac2/sfp1 WAN cage) → sfp1
- R4-2g5/R4P:  eth1 (2.5G PHY) → wan, eth2 (gmac2/sfp1 WAN cage) → sfp1

Factory reset / WPS button (GPIO14, active-low): detected by U-Boot at
boot for factory reset; reused by Linux as KEY_WPS_BUTTON at runtime.

eMMC install note: the MT7988A eMMC (pins 38-49) and SD card (pins 32-37)
use separate physical pads so there is no electrical bus sharing, unlike
some BPi-R3 configurations.  However, a single MMC controller
(mmc@11230000) handles both, so only one is active per boot session.
The eMMC install procedure therefore still requires an intermediate SPI
NAND bootloader step until a Linux-side install path is tested.

SD card build (bpi_r4_sd_boot_defconfig) now uses the new
mt7988a_bpir4_sd U-Boot defconfig with cap-sd-highspeed enabled,
giving 50 MHz SD transfers instead of the previous 25 MHz legacy mode.

Also adds MT7988/MT7996 firmware support to the buildroot linux-firmware
package, for 2.5 GbE port PHY and WiFi7 extension board, and updates the
aarch64_defconfig, aarch64_minimal_defconfig, the arch README, CI
boot/image workflows, mkimage.sh, and the ChangeLog.

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

Author: troglobit

.github/workflows/build-boot.yml

@@ -19,6 +19,8 @@ jobs:
           - aarch64_qemu_boot
           - bpi_r3_sd_boot
           - bpi_r3_emmc_boot
+          - bpi_r4_sd_boot
+          - bpi_r4_emmc_boot
           - bpi_r64_sd_boot
           - bpi_r64_emmc_boot
           - cn9130_crb_boot

.github/workflows/build-image.yml

@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ on:
           - raspberrypi-rpi2
           - raspberrypi-rpi64
           - bananapi-bpi-r3
+          - bananapi-bpi-r4
           - bananapi-bpi-r64
           - friendlyarm-nanopi-r2s
           - microchip-sama7g54-ek
@@ -68,6 +69,12 @@ jobs:
               echo "ARCH=aarch64" >> $GITHUB_ENV
               echo "BUILD_EMMC=true" >> $GITHUB_ENV
               ;;
+            bananapi-bpi-r4)
+              echo "BOOTLOADER_SD=bpi-r4-sd-boot" >> $GITHUB_ENV
+              echo "BOOTLOADER_EMMC=bpi-r4-emmc-boot" >> $GITHUB_ENV
+              echo "ARCH=aarch64" >> $GITHUB_ENV
+              echo "BUILD_EMMC=true" >> $GITHUB_ENV
+              ;;
             bananapi-bpi-r64)
               echo "BOOTLOADER_SD=bpi-r64-sd-boot" >> $GITHUB_ENV
               echo "BOOTLOADER_EMMC=bpi-r64-emmc-boot" >> $GITHUB_ENV

board/aarch64/Config.in

@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ if BR2_aarch64
 
 source "$BR2_EXTERNAL_INFIX_PATH/board/aarch64/alder-alder/Config.in"
 source "$BR2_EXTERNAL_INFIX_PATH/board/aarch64/bananapi-bpi-r3/Config.in"
+source "$BR2_EXTERNAL_INFIX_PATH/board/aarch64/bananapi-bpi-r4/Config.in"
 source "$BR2_EXTERNAL_INFIX_PATH/board/aarch64/bananapi-bpi-r64/Config.in"
 source "$BR2_EXTERNAL_INFIX_PATH/board/aarch64/freescale-imx8mp-evk/Config.in"
 source "$BR2_EXTERNAL_INFIX_PATH/board/aarch64/friendlyarm-nanopi-r2s/Config.in"

board/aarch64/README.md

@@ -4,9 +4,10 @@ aarch64
 Board Specific Documentation
 ----------------------------
 
-- [Banana Pi BPi-R3](banana-pi-r3/)
-- [Banana Pi BPi-R64](banana-pi-r64/)
-- [Marvell CN9130-CRB](cn9130-crb/)
-- [Microchip SparX-5i PCB135 (eMMC)](sparx5-pcb135/)
-- [NanoPi R2S](r2s/)
-- [Raspberry Pi 64-bit](raspberry-pi64/)
+- [Banana Pi BPi-R3](bananapi-bpi-r3/)
+- [Banana Pi BPi-R4](bananapi-bpi-r4/)
+- [Banana Pi BPi-R64](bananapi-bpi-r64/)
+- [Marvell CN9130-CRB](marvell-cn9130-crb/)
+- [Microchip SparX-5i PCB135 (eMMC)](microchip-sparx5-pcb135/)
+- [NanoPi R2S](friendlyarm-nanopi-r2s/)
+- [Raspberry Pi 64-bit](raspberrypi-rpi64/)

board/aarch64/bananapi-bpi-r4/Config.in

@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+config BR2_PACKAGE_BANANAPI_BPI_R4
+	bool "Banana Pi R4"
+	depends on BR2_aarch64
+	select BR2_PACKAGE_FEATURE_WIFI
+	select BR2_PACKAGE_LINUX_FIRMWARE
+	select BR2_PACKAGE_LINUX_FIRMWARE_MEDIATEK
+	select BR2_PACKAGE_LINUX_FIRMWARE_MEDIATEK_MT7988
+	select BR2_PACKAGE_LINUX_FIRMWARE_MEDIATEK_MT7996
+	select SDCARD_AUX
+	help
+	  Build Banana PI R4 support

board/aarch64/bananapi-bpi-r4/LICENSE

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+Copyright (c) 2026 The KernelKit Authors
+
+Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any
+purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
+copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
+WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
+MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
+ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
+WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
+ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
+OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.