On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 2:07 AM, Udit Kumar <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Rob Herring [mailto:[email protected]]
>> Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2018 8:32 PM
>> To: Udit Kumar <[email protected]>
>> Cc: Architecture Mailman List <[email protected]>;
>> [email protected]; [email protected]
>> Subject: Re: Issue#9 Document hardware need (if any)
>>
>> On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 8:47 PM, Udit Kumar <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >> -----Original Message-----
>> >> From: Rob Herring [mailto:[email protected]]
>> >> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2018 8:18 PM
>> >> To: Udit Kumar <[email protected]>
>> >> Cc: Architecture Mailman List <[email protected]>;
>> >> [email protected]; [email protected]
>> >> Subject: Re: Issue#9 Document hardware need (if any)
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 1:44 AM, Udit Kumar <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> > Hi
>> >> > At present, I don't see any specific hardware requirement for EBBR
>> >> > except
>> >> ARMv8  CPU. Current document covers it very well.
>> >>
>> >> You have to have block storage. Perhaps UEFI implies that. Boards
>> >> like the CHIP only have raw NAND and a USB connector by default. So is USB
>> MS enough?
>> >
>> > Yes but such need is not must to have EBBR running.
>>
>> I don't follow.
>
> I meant, what hardware features a SOC must have to run EBBR.
> This include IPs/CPU architecture etc.
> NAND/USB could be optional, this is not must for EBBR.

EBBR is about what the distros need/want. Raw NAND is never going to
be supported by distros (in their installers, you can always manually
craft images for NAND). USB is maybe too specific (though SD card is
really the only other choice), but there needs to be either some
removable media or network boot (or perhaps we can say both) for an OS
installer and then there must be a block device to install to. That's
one usecase. The 2nd is that you create an OS image offline and put
the image on either a USB MS device or SD card. So that is just a
subset of the first (unless the first only supports net boot).

>> >> I think being explicit with h/w requirements implied by UEFI would be
>> >> a good thing. If I'm designing a board, I don't want to have to sort
>> >> thru UEFI specs to distill down a bullet list of h/w reqs.
>> >
>> > I like to cover here, all on/off chip components could be IP/peripherals 
>> > needed
>> for EBBR.
>> > Like if USB is present, minimum version of xchi or echi needs to be 
>> > supported
>> by hardware.
>>
>> One look at XHCI or EHCI drivers and the variations across SoCs will tell 
>> you that
>> just specifying those specs is pointless. But it is probably worth saying 
>> something
>> about USB. Perhaps saying USB host
>> port(s) (more than 1?) required and the firmware must support booting from
>> USB.
>
> I put USB as an example.
> Please refer SBSA, which mandate the version of ECHI/XCHI

As Grant said, SBSA has a different focus. IMO, it has the same issue
I mentioned though. Just look at the mess the SBSA uart is.

> should be supported. Also this specify other IPs too like Timer, UART, GiC etc
>
> IMO, such strict hardware requirement for EBBR will not be useful.

Agreed. We'd be kidding ourselves that we have any say in the SoC design.

Rob
_______________________________________________
boot-architecture mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/boot-architecture

Reply via email to