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

Ken.Fuchs at bench.com Ken.Fuchs at bench.com
Fri Jun 6 00:37:10 CEST 2008


Thanks to everyone suggesting AMD processor
alternatives (Geode LX) a while back.  However,
we have decided to stay with Intel Atom (due to
its much faster clock speed as well low power
requirements).

Which version of coreboot (v2 or v3) would be
better to port to Intel Atom?  We want a fast
boot up to both Linux and at least one Microsoft
OS (maybe CE).  Based on Carl-Daniel Hailfinger's
recent post regarding "Open Firmware", v3 would
probably be much faster than v2.

I helped do an (Opteron) nVidia nForce4 LinuxBIOS
port a few years ago, but I don't think it will be
much help in porting coreboot to the Intel Atom.
Which coreboot chipset might be the best starting
point for a port to Intel Atom?

Any other opinions about firmware development
on the Atom would be welcome ...

It seems like an American Arium ECM-XDP3 with
SourcePoint would be well worth the price for
a large porting effort such as this.  (It will
provide both assembly and C level JTAG debugging.)
Is there a cheaper JTAG debugger that might be
viable on Atom/Poulsbo?

The firmware will be stored on a SPI NOR flash
via LPC and an embedded controller rather than
FWH.

I have two major concerns about this port:

1) I may not have enough time/resources to complete
   it.  So I may end up optimizing a commercial UEFI
   solution.

2) I'm not sure I will be able to contribute my
   source code changes back to the coreboot project
   due to NDA restrictions/ambiguities.

Sincerely,

Ken Fuchs




More information about the coreboot mailing list