Looks good so far. A couple more points to bring up:
12. Coreboot is highly configurable (via menu-driven Linux Kconfig) and can be easily tailored for both server *and* embedded applications -- A single firmware core for platforms both big and small.
13. Development and compilation are done using free/open source tools -- No costly proprietary development tools are needed (in addition to a costly proprietary firmware core).
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger < c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006@gmx.net> wrote:
Hi,
if you know of any cool features in coreboot, flashrom, buildrom, libpayload, coreinfo etc., please list them in response to this mail. Since I'm working almost exclusively on v3 and flashrom, I'm bound to miss the exciting news/features in other areas, so please help me out.
Exciting coreboot features are:
- Almost every (free) operating system can be used as a payload in ROM
- Having an OS in ROM means it works even if HDD/UDB/NIC are broken
- Logging in with SSH is possible regardless of the brokenness of local
storage if the payload has a SSH server or can load one via network 4. Security against viruses/malware: If write protection for the ROM is active (and can't be circumvented), the OS in ROM can't be compromised 5. Improved diagnostics: We don't rely on the usual cryptic and uninformative beep codes, but output meaningful english error and debug messages via the serial port 6. Error and status messages are saved in RAM (v3 only) and can be read by the OS during or after boot with a dmesg-like mechanism 7. Extemely high speed: We have a record of ~600 ms from poweron to bootloader, which is in stark contrast to the 10-30 seconds for proprietary BIOS 8. Anything supported by the hardware can be supported by coreboot: Some universities use the second processor socket of a dual processor board for a FPGA instead f a processor 9. The code is written almost completely in C with ~100 lines assembly remaining per architecture, compared to pure assembly for proprietary BIOS 10. Recompilation of the whole firmware with arbitrary features takes 10-30 seconds (v3 only) 11. You decide which features (EFI/OpenFirmware/BIOS/etc) you want, the vendor can't limit you
Exciting flashrom features are:
- No reboot needed for BIOS update
- No DOS/Windows needed for BIOS update
- Cross-flashing is possible
- Hot-flashing is possible
Regards, Carl-Daniel
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