Re: [coreboot] Porting coreboot to Intel Atom (Silverthorne) & SCH US15W (Poulsbo) chipset

[Joseph Smith]

On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:40:56 -0500,  wrote:
> bari wrote:
> > There are several i945 + Atom boards available. This way you can
> > develop and test Atom on a working chipset and then work on the
> > US15W.
>
> In my opinion, porting US15W may not be worthwhile, since it doesn't
> support the SPI bus which would allow use of SPI NOR flash.  US15W
> supports FWH which Intel has already obsoleted, although It may have
> contracted with third parties to supply FWH devices for this chip set.
>
> Also, this chipset almost requires an embedded controller to handle
> power and translate between FWH and SPI bus to support SPI NOR devices.
> Intel does offer a CPLD solution that avoids the use of the embedded
> controller, but the CPLD would only permit reading of the SPI NOR
> flash and absolutely no writing of it.
>
> The US15W also has it own microcode updating that the BIOS/firmware
> must support.
>
> The i945/ICH7M would be a far better final target for an Atom chipset
> and has none of the above mentioned issues.  Of course you would need
> to use Diamondville Atom rather Silverthorne Atom in this case.
>
> Good luck with your Poulsbo (US15W) port, assuming you are willing to
> spend 6-9 months on it.  It could be more or less than that depending
> on the number of people working on it and their firmware experience.

Hey this is not very encouraging but very discouraging:-(
But I'm sure Albert Einstein heard heard things like this every day!
Mansoor, if you want to develop coreboot support for the Atom, I say go for
it :-)

Porting coreboot to Intel Atom (Silverthorne) & SCH US15W (Poulsbo) chipset

> On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:40:56 -0500,  wrote:

...
> > Good luck with your Poulsbo (US15W) port, assuming you are willing to
> > spend 6-9 months on it.  It could be more or less than that depending
> > on the number of people working on it and their firmware experience.

Joseph Smith wrote:
> Hey this is not very encouraging but very discouraging:-(
> But I'm sure Albert Einstein heard heard things like this every day!
> Mansoor, if you want to develop coreboot support for the Atom, I say
> go for it :-)

Supporting Atom on coreboot is (almost) trivial, if one is willing to
use the already supported 945/ICH7 chipset and maybe adapt to 945GSE.
It may actually take more time to set up a development system than do
the few days or a week of porting that the Atom processor may require.

On the other hand, the US15W is likely to consume far more resources
and literally stretch into a 9 month or more project.  The US15W is
not worth the effort, considering all its limitations that I have
previously mentioned.

Sincerely,

Ken Fuchs