NOTE: this is a work in progress!
The CI20 reference board from Imagination Technologies contains:
There are apparently multiple UARTs on this board -see http://elinux.org/CI20_Hardware#Dedicated_UART_header for the console uart (uart4).
Use TARGET_ARCH=mipselhf to enable hard float support. This appears to work (thank you, Ruslan!), but was only lightly tested on this board.
The earlier software version (Debian 7) shipped with a uboot/dts that used uart0. This isn't the dedicated uart4 connector.
When you upgrade to debian 8 it'll come with an updated uboot/dts which will change the dts to point the console out uart4.
FreeBSD's dts (sys/gnu/dts/mips/ingenic/ci20.dts) sets stdout-path = &uart4, which matches the updated firmware. For the Debian 7 firmware, you should change this to uart0 before compiling the kernel so the bootloader console and FreeBSD serial console match.