[U-Boot] QE firmware/microcode handling

[Timur Tabi <timur@freescale.com>]

Gerlando Falauto wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> following up Timur's patch on QE microcode:
> 
> http://marc.info/?l=u-boot&m=132197537730440&w=2
> 
> I was wondering, would it make any sense to *embed* QE's firmware within 
> u-boot image itself?

There are three problems:

1) A lot of U-Boot images are already very close to the 512KB limit.  We
often have to disable features in U-Boot to get it to build properly.  An
additional 64KB would be prohibitive.

2) The firmware license is not exactly GPL-compatible.  The firmware files
themselves are freely distributable, but the source code is closed.  I'm
not sure how that would work in a GPL U-Boot.

3) For Fman, at least, we often update the firmware after the board ships,
which means you would need to update U-Boot to get a new firmware.  So no
one might actually use this feature because they're afraid they won't be
able to update the firmware.

If you can do it, go ahead.  I would approve a patch that adds the ability
to inject a firmware binary into u-boot.bin, provided it's controlled via
a build or CONFIG_SYS_xxx option.

-- 
Timur Tabi
Linux kernel developer at Freescale