[coreboot] GSoC project ideas

Oliver Schinagl oliver at schinagl.nl
Mon Mar 12 19:52:18 CET 2012


On 03/12/12 19:07, Svetoslav Trochev wrote:
> Hi Carl-Daniel,
>
> I don't qualify as GSoC student (too old ;) ). For sure I can't be
I don't think age matters, as long as you are an student at a recognized 
school, google approves.
> mentor because I am absolute newbie here, but I am interested to find
> out If I can help with one of those projects. I know the theory how
> those things are working, but I have zero experience. Do you think I
> can be useful even if it is outside the GSoC program?
>
> Thanks,
> Svetoslav Trochev
>
> On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
> <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net>  wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> given the lack of affordable and available hardware tools for coreboot
>> development, I propose to look for a different set of projects this
>> year: Tools which would help developers, and which are usable especially
>> with current hardware. A list of ideas follows.
>>
>> - Flash ICE device with SPI support.
>> - Flash ICE device with LPC/FWH support.
>> - Serial emulation for LPC buses on a configurable I/O port with USB
>> output on the other side.
>> - Dual serial emulation for two LPC buses either on the same device or
>> with two identical devices and a fast bus in between.
>> - Serial emulation for PCI buses (i.e. PCI/serial card).
>>
>> The reason for the flash ICE devices is obvious: Avoid external
>> reflashing while you're developing.
>>
>> The serial emulation or similar POST code port emulation is meant to
>> provide a serial console, a SerialICE connection and/or some POST code
>> output channel. This is especially important for laptops where debugging
>> can be a pain and where you usually have a LPC bus available in the
>> MiniPCIe slot.
>>
>> The dual serial emulation for two LPC buses would work as a fast
>> PC-to-PC connection for SerialICE and other purposes where you need low
>> latency, not necessarily high throughput.
>>
>> The serial emulation for PCI buses would complement the serial emulation
>> for LPC to provide an easy way to connect to a SerialICE instance on the
>> other side.
>>
>> As a basis for all those ideas I'd propose the Openbench logic sniffer.
>> It has a fast FPGA, enough gates and roughly 32 kByte RAM. The FPGA is
>> fast enough and big enough to accommodate the necessary logic, and we
>> could easily attach a fast (66+ MHz) SPI flash chip to it. And with $50
>> incl. shipping the OLS is not extremely cheap, but worth its price and
>> easily available. Fast flash chips are also available for reasonable prices.
>>
>> All of those projects would not result in any coreboot code, but they
>> would make development easier, and that's a value in itself, especially
>> now that we're porting coreboot to laptops where a LPC bus may be the
>> only easily available bus at startup.
>>
>> Comments? Do we have mentors who can review VHDL/Verilog?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Carl-Daniel
>>
>> --
>> coreboot mailing list: coreboot at coreboot.org
>> http://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot





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