Re: [gentoo-embedded] Re: boot linux without a bios on intel platform

[Kfir Lavi]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Peter Stuge <peter@×××××.se> wrote:

> Kfir Lavi wrote:
> > > I have an intel board, and the bios boots after 22sec.
> > > Is it possible to boot the linux without a bios.
>
> coreboot is your only alternative to a BIOS. I'm active in the
> project since some years. Instead of coreboot you could of course
> also consider buying licenses for a custom BIOS from AMI but that
> is often prohibitively expensive.
>
>
> > I have spoke in irc #gentoo-embedded with landley and he explained
> > some stuff about my question regarding coreboot, uboot on x86.
>
> uboot is not widely used on x86 so far. There has been some talk
> between coreboot and uboot because the two could complement each
> other well, but not yet.
>
> You're of course welcome to stop by #coreboot and talk to us, and/or
> check out some of the talks.
>
> http://www.coreboot.org/Screenshots#Videos
>
> I'd recommend "Beyond The Final Frontier" from 25C3 as a start:
>
>
> http://www.coreboot.org/Screenshots#Chaos_Communication_Congress_2008_.2825C3.29:_coreboot:_Beyond_The_Final_Frontier
>
> coreboot completes it's task in a few hundred milliseconds. Some more
> complicated boards (lots of busses and CPUs) take longer, maybe a
> second or even two.
>
> We have a list of supported mainboards:
>
> http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards
>
> If your board is not listed it may be easy or it may be hard. When
> talking to us about it please be sure to provide very specific
> information about your hardware. "intel board" is e.g. useless, we
> need details for CPU, chipset, superio and the boot flash.
>
> As a general rule, NVIDIA and Intel are the worst possible targets
> for coreboot, because they will not release documentation.
>
> NVIDIA is simply impossible. Intel can be done, but you need a strong
> business case with promise of many many units, and you need to sign
> two NDAs in order to access the required, but insufficient,
> documentation. The docs have some information but not all. It's
> generally neccessary to reverse engineer parts of the factory BIOS in
> order to actually get a board fully working.
>
> On the opposite end of the spectrum is AMD, who have engineers
> actively contributing code to coreboot. AMD recently let us know that
> they will be adding AGESA support to coreboot, as well as releasing
> AGESA under open source license, which means that coreboot will be
> able to initialize many if not all AMD platforms with the code
> written by AMD themselves, which is also being used by commercial
> BIOS vendors. (AGESA is a firmware plugin system for AMD systems.)
> This is of course really great news! :)
>
> There was mention of BOCHS BIOS in the chat log. coreboot does not
> want to be a BIOS, because BIOS is a 30 year old concept. There is
> clean separation between coreboot and what we call a payload.
> coreboot does hardware init, the payload starts the operating system.
> I rant about ACPI a bit in the talks.
>
> Payloads can be bootloaders or even a kernel. But for maximum
> performance you will want to use SeaBIOS, an open source BIOS
> implementation, as payload - because it supports ATA DMA, and boot
> flash is much slower than that. (See http://stuge.se/pc2010.png - the
> flash chip is *far* away from the CPU, on a slow bus.)
>
> SeaBIOS was originally forked from BOCHS BIOS, but is very much a
> project of it's own by now, is continually being updated, and is also
> the default BIOS shipped with QEMU since some versions back.
>
>
> Hope this helps clarify a bit.
>
> //Peter
>
> Hi Peter,
Thanks for your lengthy replay. Very interesting talk.
I loved the push pins idea. Now I'm asking myself,
how I didn't thought about it myself. I used a paper clip, but it is
awkward.
I have a kontron board with an intel cpu. How can I get the spec with the
parts
in order to check if I will be able to use coreboot?
Attached is the lspci of the board.
I would also like to know (if it is possible) how hard is to create support
for this
board myself.

Regards,
Kfir