[coreboot] Coreboot on ARM? (was: Re: Coreboot or UEFI, who will be the winner.)

[Robert Schwebel]

Hi Peter,
Hi Stefan,

[adding Sascha Hauer to the Cc: list, as he is the maintainer of
u-boot-v2]

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 11:49:32PM +0200, Peter Stuge wrote:
> > > I did discuss with Denx about running the non-hardware-specific
> > > part of U-Boot as a payload. They were not uninterested.

U-Boot-v2 can be run as a completely hardware-init less payload; in
fact, there are already two scenarios where we actually do that:

- sandbox: you can compile u-boot-v2 to run in POSIX userspace; this is
  mainly used for testing the command part

- 2nd stage booting: We sometimes use u-boot-v2 as a second stage ontop
  of for example u-boot-v1, in order to get the scripting environment
  running on systems where we don't have the time/need to develop the
  lowlevel initialization (i.e. development boards where v1 is already
  there and the adaption will be finally done on the custom hw).

> > It has a few less features, but a considerably nicer design. And,
> > the Pengutronix folks seemed very interested to see it happen as a
> > coreboot payload.

Yes, that would really be interesting.

> Yes, I've talked a lot with Wolfgang about coreboot, at several
> events. Maybe it was even Pengutronix people rather than Denx people I
> had a chat with at embeddedworld? Hmm. :)

Maybe :)

> > I think this would be a real improvement for both projects, coreboot
> > (nice and slim, standardized user interface, could replace FILO) as
> > well as u-boot (access to the x86 world without re-implementing the
> > wheel).
>
> Agree.

We are definitely interested.

> > I had this on my TODO, but there's been too much other stuff so far.
> > Yet I would love to see this happen. Maybe we get the momentum
> > together?
>
> So many things TODO.. :\
>
> What does u-boot v2 need from coreboot?

Hardware initialization, plus maybe some interface which can be used to
find out about the hardware parts you want to use in the boot process.

Can you elaborate about your use case?

Robert
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