Hammer Documentation is now Available at AMD's website

So far I have just skimmed the Documentation but it appears that
AMD has now publicly published everything needed to do  Hammer
LinuxBIOS port.

No great surprise but it is nice to actually see it !

Yeah!  The chaos with the Dual Athlons has finally paid off :)

Eric

[Adam Agnew]

Perhaps the LinuxBIOS project can commit to supporting *every* AMD 64-bit
chipset? It seems like a good place to draw a line in the sand, as
information is starting out freely available. Thoughts?

On 22 Apr 2003, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> So far I have just skimmed the Documentation but it appears that
> AMD has now publicly published everything needed to do  Hammer
> LinuxBIOS port.
>
> No great surprise but it is nice to actually see it !
>
> Yeah!  The chaos with the Dual Athlons has finally paid off :)
>
> Eric
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Justin Cormack]

On Tue, 2003-04-22 at 20:53, Adam Agnew wrote:
> Perhaps the LinuxBIOS project can commit to supporting *every* AMD 64-bit
> chipset? It seems like a good place to draw a line in the sand, as
> information is starting out freely available. Thoughts?

I doubt it. Nvidia are not usually very forthcoming. Several of the
chipsets look like being quite odd hybrids of existing athlon chipsets.

Justin

Adam Agnew  writes:
> Perhaps the LinuxBIOS project can commit to supporting *every* AMD 64-bit
> chipset? It seems like a good place to draw a line in the sand, as
> information is starting out freely available. Thoughts?

We can only do that if someone has either the economic incentive
to do it, or they know they will have the free time.

We don't seem to have that yet.

Eric

[Deepak Kotian]

Sorry.
Could one please  give the exact link/url where
AMD has now publicly published  the LinuxBIOS 
Port documentation. Did not find it easily.

Regards
Deepak

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Agnew" 
To: "Eric W. Biederman" 
Cc: "LinuxBIOS" 
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 1:23 AM
Subject: Re: Hammer Documentation is now Available at AMD's website
> Perhaps the LinuxBIOS project can commit to supporting *every* AMD 64-bit
> chipset? It seems like a good place to draw a line in the sand, as
> information is starting out freely available. Thoughts?
>
> On 22 Apr 2003, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> > So far I have just skimmed the Documentation but it appears that
> > AMD has now publicly published everything needed to do  Hammer
> > LinuxBIOS port.
> >
> > No great surprise but it is nice to actually see it !
> >
> > Yeah!  The chaos with the Dual Athlons has finally paid off :)
> >
> > Eric
> >
> > Linuxbios mailing list
> > [e-mail]
> > http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Deepak Kotian  [030423 19:57]:
> Could one please  give the exact link/url where
> AMD has now publicly published  the LinuxBIOS 
> Port documentation. Did not find it easily.

AMD Opteron Tech Docs:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_739_9003,00...
AMD 8000(tm) Series Chipset Tech Docs:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_739_9004,00...
AMD64 Tech Docs:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_739_7044,00...

Especially interesting for LinuxBIOS is definitely this one:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/2609...

Best regards,
  Stefan Reinauer

"Thomas J. Merritt"  writes:
> |<><><><><> Original message from Eric W. Biederman  <><><><><>
> |So far I have just skimmed the Documentation but it appears that
> |AMD has now publicly published everything needed to do  Hammer
> |LinuxBIOS port.
> |
> |No great surprise but it is nice to actually see it !
> |
> |Yeah!  The chaos with the Dual Athlons has finally paid off :)
>
> It does appear that they have released all of the documentation 
> necessary.  The learning curve is pretty steep though.  There are
> a lot of registers to program to make a box sing.  We have been
> able to bring SmartFirmware up on our AMD Solo box.  It has taken
> about 5 months to get to the point that we can now boot NetBSD.
> We're currently unable to boot Linux, but making progress on that front.

Hmm.  I wonder if that is because of the open firmware chaos.
So far I have not seen anything out of the ordinary in the way of
a learning curve, and I just booted a linux kernel.
> On the LinuxBIOS front we're planning to leverage our x86-64 experience
> and provide commercial support for LinuxBIOS on AMD64 processors.  
> With AMD's public release of the processor and chipset documentation we
> should be releived of most of our NDA obligations, and this will now
> become possible.  If anyone has hardware and is contemplating bring up
> LinuxBIOS please let me know, since I don't want to duplicate effort if
> we can avoid it.

You have heard the talk about the freebios2 tree?

Anyway Stefan Reinauer at SuSe and I are busily bringing it up.
So far so good.  We are still in the stage where you hard code things,
so you know you understand what registers need to be programmed,
but everything has been straight forward so far.

Eric

"Thomas J. Merritt"  writes:
> |<><><><><> Original message from Eric W. Biederman  <><><><><>
> |"Thomas J. Merritt"  writes:
> |
> |> |<><><><><> Original message from Eric W. Biederman  <><><><><>
> |> |So far I have just skimmed the Documentation but it appears that
> |> |AMD has now publicly published everything needed to do  Hammer
> |> |LinuxBIOS port.
> |> |
> |> |No great surprise but it is nice to actually see it !
> |> |
> |> |Yeah!  The chaos with the Dual Athlons has finally paid off :)
> |> 
> |> It does appear that they have released all of the documentation 
> |> necessary.  The learning curve is pretty steep though.  There are
> |> a lot of registers to program to make a box sing.  We have been
> |> able to bring SmartFirmware up on our AMD Solo box.  It has taken
> |> about 5 months to get to the point that we can now boot NetBSD.
> |> We're currently unable to boot Linux, but making progress on that front.
> |
> |Hmm.  I wonder if that is because of the open firmware chaos.
>
> Open Firmware is pretty much out of the picture when the kernel takes 
> over.  The primary problem is the wired assumptions in the legacy PC
> chaos.

I guess that is what I meant the chaos of having Open Firmware or
anything else besides exactly what the kernel was expecting.
> |So far I have not seen anything out of the ordinary in the way of
> |a learning curve, and I just booted a linux kernel.
>
> Keep in mind that our background is primarily PowerPC, Sparc, MIPS and ARM
> processors and we've avoided x86 for the most part.  Learning the
> Hammer side of things has been relatively easy, it has been more 
> painful learning the legacy PC stuff that hangs out in the 8111
> I/O Hub.

Not a problem.  The comment was meant more for than you to clarify
that the Hammer was exceptionally complex, for an x86 cpu.
> |> On the LinuxBIOS front we're planning to leverage our x86-64 experience
> |> and provide commercial support for LinuxBIOS on AMD64 processors.  
> |> With AMD's public release of the processor and chipset documentation we
> |> should be releived of most of our NDA obligations, and this will now
> |> become possible.  If anyone has hardware and is contemplating bring up
> |> LinuxBIOS please let me know, since I don't want to duplicate effort if
> |> we can avoid it.
> |
> |You have heard the talk about the freebios2 tree?
> |
> |Anyway Stefan Reinauer at SuSe and I are busily bringing it up.
> |So far so good.  We are still in the stage where you hard code things,
> |so you know you understand what registers need to be programmed,
> |but everything has been straight forward so far.
>
> As straight forward as a PC can I would say.  Given that you have
> experience with prior AMD chipsets, the Hammer should look pretty 
> familiar.  We've reviewed about 5000 pages of documentation in the
> last several months and have most of it digested now.

Yep.  There can certainly be a lot to review and digest if you are new to x86.
The only good thing is that basic assumption stay the same for a long time.

Eric

[Thomas J. Merritt]

|<><><><><> Original message from Eric W. Biederman  <><><><><>
|So far I have just skimmed the Documentation but it appears that
|AMD has now publicly published everything needed to do  Hammer
|LinuxBIOS port.
|
|No great surprise but it is nice to actually see it !
|
|Yeah!  The chaos with the Dual Athlons has finally paid off :)

It does appear that they have released all of the documentation 
necessary.  The learning curve is pretty steep though.  There are
a lot of registers to program to make a box sing.  We have been
able to bring SmartFirmware up on our AMD Solo box.  It has taken
about 5 months to get to the point that we can now boot NetBSD.
We're currently unable to boot Linux, but making progress on that front.

On the LinuxBIOS front we're planning to leverage our x86-64 experience
and provide commercial support for LinuxBIOS on AMD64 processors.  
With AMD's public release of the processor and chipset documentation we
should be releived of most of our NDA obligations, and this will now
become possible.  If anyone has hardware and is contemplating bring up
LinuxBIOS please let me know, since I don't want to duplicate effort if
we can avoid it.

TJ Merritt
[e-mail]
1-925-462-4300 x115

[Thomas J. Merritt]

|<><><><><> Original message from "Deepak Kotian"  <><><><><>
|Sorry.
|Could one please  give the exact link/url where
|AMD has now publicly published  the LinuxBIOS 
|Port documentation. Did not find it easily.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/DevelopWithAMD/0,,30_2252_739_9003,00.ht...

TJ Merritt
[e-mail]
1-925-462-4300 x125

[Thomas J. Merritt]

|<><><><><> Original message from Eric W. Biederman  <><><><><>
|"Thomas J. Merritt"  writes:
|
|> |<><><><><> Original message from Eric W. Biederman  <><><><><>
|> |So far I have just skimmed the Documentation but it appears that
|> |AMD has now publicly published everything needed to do  Hammer
|> |LinuxBIOS port.
|> |
|> |No great surprise but it is nice to actually see it !
|> |
|> |Yeah!  The chaos with the Dual Athlons has finally paid off :)
|> 
|> It does appear that they have released all of the documentation 
|> necessary.  The learning curve is pretty steep though.  There are
|> a lot of registers to program to make a box sing.  We have been
|> able to bring SmartFirmware up on our AMD Solo box.  It has taken
|> about 5 months to get to the point that we can now boot NetBSD.
|> We're currently unable to boot Linux, but making progress on that front.
|
|Hmm.  I wonder if that is because of the open firmware chaos.

Open Firmware is pretty much out of the picture when the kernel takes 
over.  The primary problem is the wired assumptions in the legacy PC
chaos.

|So far I have not seen anything out of the ordinary in the way of
|a learning curve, and I just booted a linux kernel.

Keep in mind that our background is primarily PowerPC, Sparc, MIPS and ARM
processors and we've avoided x86 for the most part.  Learning the
Hammer side of things has been relatively easy, it has been more 
painful learning the legacy PC stuff that hangs out in the 8111
I/O Hub.

|> On the LinuxBIOS front we're planning to leverage our x86-64 experience
|> and provide commercial support for LinuxBIOS on AMD64 processors.  
|> With AMD's public release of the processor and chipset documentation we
|> should be releived of most of our NDA obligations, and this will now
|> become possible.  If anyone has hardware and is contemplating bring up
|> LinuxBIOS please let me know, since I don't want to duplicate effort if
|> we can avoid it.
|
|You have heard the talk about the freebios2 tree?
|
|Anyway Stefan Reinauer at SuSe and I are busily bringing it up.
|So far so good.  We are still in the stage where you hard code things,
|so you know you understand what registers need to be programmed,
|but everything has been straight forward so far.

As straight forward as a PC can I would say.  Given that you have
experience with prior AMD chipsets, the Hammer should look pretty 
familiar.  We've reviewed about 5000 pages of documentation in the
last several months and have most of it digested now.

TJ Merritt
[e-mail]
1-925-462-4300 x115