[coreboot] passing EFI-console-like info to payloads

Jordan Crouse jordan.crouse at amd.com
Tue Apr 8 02:14:01 CEST 2008


On 07/04/08 16:58 -0700, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> Jordan Crouse wrote:
>
>> Seriously, though - I think that optionROM handling should remain in
>> coreboot, because I think thats the best place for it.  Yes, an optionROM
>> might start VGA, but that shouldn't mean we implicitly condone all
>> graphics init in coreboot, just like we don't plan to spin up drives
>> just because a RAID card optionROM is initialized.    
> Handling all devices of a certain type in the same place in a similar 
> manner does lead to a sane code flow.
>
> I am not sure we really want to handle graphics init sequences in 3 
> different places, depending on whether we have open source drivers or not.
>
> The libpayload stuff for geode is nice, but there is similar code for ATI 
> cards in linuxbios, and there is option rom based init in another place. 
> This is very scattered and I don't really see the reason for that, nor 
> believe it makes sense.

My opinion is - during PCI init, if you have an optionROM, you should run
it.   If we start deciding to run some optionROMs and not others, then
we'll get confused fast.

My other opinion is that native graphics drivers should run in the payload,
We should lose the ATI card stuff in coreboot.  That consolidates the code
by type - native code in the payload, optionROM in coreboot, and we 
can ignore what actual device either mechanism runs.

Jordan
-- 
Jordan Crouse
Systems Software Development Engineer 
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.





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