[coreboot] Project for thesis

[Sergio Valverde]

Hello:

My name is Sergio Valverde and I'm a student at Universidad de Costa Rica.
I came across Google Summer of Code and I'm very interested in
collaborating with you if any project of those is still available. I'm
eager to participate in an open source project, especially one that
involves Linux device drivers and Kernel hacking.

I'm currently finishing my licentiate ("licenciatura") degree, which would
be a degree between bachelor and master here in Costa Rica. For graduation,
it requires a bachelor-level thesis, so I wanted to know if you have a
project that has that kind of scope (or if I can propose one) and if it
would be available for a student like me to collaborate.

My background is in electronic engineering and I'm currently working as an
embedded software developer in Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Costa Rica.
I'm working in a SDK team for a networking ASIC and my main duties have
involved building firmware images with Yocto, writing Linux device drivers
for PCIe and coding software to interface high-level functions with
hardware registers.

I'm really looking forward for whatever information you can give me in this
matter. I attached my resume to this mail and my Linkedin profile URL is
https://cr.linkedin.com/in/sergio-valverde-9058b971.

Hopefully we can work together.
Sergio Valverde
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[coreboot] New on blogs.coreboot.org: [GSoC] Better RISC-V support, week #4/5

[WordPress]

A new post titled "[GSoC] Better RISC-V support, week #4/5" has been published on the coreboot blog. Find the full post at http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2016/06/27/gsoc-better-risc-v-support-week-45/

Week 4
In week 4, I tracking down why coreboot halted after about one line of output. It turned out to be a spike bug, that I wrote up in this bug report, and affect any program that doesn’t have a tohost symbol. As a workaround, I extended my script that turns coreboot.rom into a ELF to also include this symbol.
After some more patches I could run coreboot in spike and get the familiar “Payload not loaded” line.
Week 5
I was now clearly moving towards being able to run linux on spike/coreboot. But there was a problem: The RISC-V linux port requires a working implementation of the Supervisor Binary Interface (SBI), which is a collection of functions that the supervisor (i.e. the linux kernel) can call in the system firmware.
Coreboot has an implementation of the SBI, but it’s probably outdated by now. To get an up-to-date SBI implementation, I decided to use bbl as a payload. When I built bbl with coreboot’s RISC-V toolchain, I noticed that it depends on a libc being installed in two ways:

The autoconf-generated configure script checks that the C compiler can compile and link a program, which only succeeds if it finds a linker script (riscv.ld) and a crt0.o in the right place.
bbl relies on the libc headers to declare some common functions and types (it doesn’t use any of the implementations in the libc, though).

The coreboot toolchain script doesn’t, however, install a libc, because coreboot doesn’t need one.
I tweaked the bbl source code until it didn’t need the libc headers, changed the implementation of mcall_console_putchar to use my 8250 UART, got the payload section of bbl (where linux is stored before it’s loaded) out of the way of the CBFS by moving it to 0x8100 (bbl/bbl.lds is the relevant file for this change), and could finally observe Linux booting in spike, on top of coreboot and bbl. It stops with a kernel panic, though, because it doesn’t have a root filesystem.
Plans for this week
This week I will document my work on the Spike wiki page in the coreboot wiki, so others can run coreboot on spike, too.


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Re: [coreboot] How to get support for amd southbridge rs780l

[Alexey Borovikov via coreboot]

Thanks, but this document not consists information about RS780L. I tried to 
register on the AMD Emdedded Devsite.
I was able to start up the internal graphics core, but unfortunately only in 
text mode. I think the problem in the initialization in funcution - 
internal_gfx_pci_dev_init and rs780_internal_gfx_enable 
(src\southbridge\amd\rs780\gfx.c).
The lack of documentation does not give me the opportunity to properly install 
the necessary bits for gfx.

From: Zoran Stojsavljevic 
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2016 7:08 AM
To: Alexey Borovikov 
Cc: coreboot 
Subject: Re: [coreboot] How to get support for amd southbridge rs780l

Privet Alex. 

Maybe this might help you/mozet eto pomozet vam (I googled it it from Germany)?

43734 AMD 780G Family BIOS Developer’s Guide 1.01 - © 2009 Advanced Micro 
Devices, Inc.
http://support.amd.com/TechDocs/43734.pdf


Document also attached.

Zoran

On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 7:55 PM, Alexey Borovikov via coreboot 
 wrote:

  Hi, I porting Coreboot on the motherboard Asus m5a78l-m lx3 (AMD Fam10h + 
760G (RS780L).
  I cant set the correct memory map and launch the internal graphics core. I 
think the problem is an incorrect initialization Southbridge RS780L and gfx. 
The lack of documentation on the chipset RS780L and the source code to 
initialize it makes it impossible to complete the porting. 
  How can I get support from AMD, get documentation or source code for 
initialize Southbridge RS780L and gfx?
  All thanks!

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Re: [coreboot] Porting coreboot on ASUS M5A78L-M LX3

[Alexey Borovikov via coreboot]

I was able to start up the internal graphics core, but unfortunately only in 
text mode. I think the problem in the initialization in funcution - 
internal_gfx_pci_dev_init and rs780_internal_gfx_enable 
(src\southbridge\amd\rs780\gfx.c).
The lack of documentation does not give me the opportunity to properly install 
the necessary bits for gfx.
Thanks for any help.

From: Алексей Боровиковvia coreboot 
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2016 9:43 PM
To: coreboot@coreboot.org 
Subject: [coreboot] Porting coreboot on ASUS M5A78L-M LX3

Hi!

I need help to porting coreboot Asus M4a785m on Asus M5a78l-m lx3.

I'm trying to porting coreboot on the motherboard Asus M5a78l-m lx3 
(rs780l/sb710). I cannot find documentation for the northbridge rs780l.

My configuration:  cpu - Athlon 2 x2 220 (K10), memory - 2 + 2 Gb DDR3, video - 
Asus GT520, sata segate hdd 500Gb, sata asus dvd-rw.

I have a positive result for the configuration with memory 2Gb and external 
video card Asus GT520. I can load Linux kernel 2.6.

But, i have two problems:

1. I cannot load coreboot with internal graphics card (hd 3000). Coreboot stops 
loading and to print on console "Calling option ROM…". May be the problems with 
gfx configuration?

2. I cannot run Linux with memory 4Gb. Coreboot is loading, SeaBios is loading 
too, but  Linux stop load on usb3-2 and ata1 setup. May be the problems with 
memory map?

Please, help me. I can provide all the necessary information from the log 
coreboot, SeaBios and Linux.

Thanks.




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Re: [coreboot] T420 Optimus/NVIDIA GPU support

[Patrick Rudolph]

On 2016-06-26 07:25 AM, Intel Miner wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask about this, but
> 
> I'm eyeing off buying a Lenovo T420 ThinkPad, specifically one with the
> NVIDIA GPU, with "Optimus" support
> 
> The information I can dig up on the initial support says that the NVIDIA
> GPU models are NOT supported by Coreboot
> 
> However I see in the hybrid_graphics.c file that there's a listing for the
> "T420/T520" (the T520 seemingly /does/ support the NVIDIA GPU?)
> 
> I can't seem to find any up-to-date information either way regarding the
> GPU status in the T420 however. Any information regarding this would be
> appreciated :)
> 
> (Alternatively I could just purchase one, build Coreboot and try, of
> course!)

Hi !
Latest coreboot does support Nvidia GPUs on all Txx models, but it
doesn't support Optimus.
The hybrid_graphics is for switching display panel to the selected GPU
on Optimus muxed laptops.
At the moment you can choose to use one of the GPUs at boot time! The
other one will be disabled.
In theory you could use both GPU at the same time using DRI_PRIME (with
latest HEAD),
but it will use much more power, as Optimus isn't supported, and the
Nvidia GPU is always active.

What's missing to implement Nvidia Optimus:
* ACPI for panel switching on "muxed" devices
* ACPI for power switching on all devices

Regards,
Patrick

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[coreboot] T420 Optimus/NVIDIA GPU support

[Intel Miner]

Hi everyone,

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask about this, but

I'm eyeing off buying a Lenovo T420 ThinkPad, specifically one with the
NVIDIA GPU, with "Optimus" support

The information I can dig up on the initial support says that the NVIDIA
GPU models are NOT supported by Coreboot

However I see in the hybrid_graphics.c file that there's a listing for the
"T420/T520" (the T520 seemingly /does/ support the NVIDIA GPU?)

I can't seem to find any up-to-date information either way regarding the
GPU status in the T420 however. Any information regarding this would be
appreciated :)

(Alternatively I could just purchase one, build Coreboot and try, of
course!)
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