Re: [PATCH 00/18] hw/riscv: Add Microchip PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit board support

[Anup Patel <anup@brainfault.org>]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 1:23 AM <Cyril.Jean@microchip.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/17/20 8:28 PM, Alistair Francis wrote:
> > EXTERNAL EMAIL: Do not click links or open attachments unless you know the content is safe
> >
> > On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 11:12 AM via <qemu-devel@nongnu.org> wrote:
> >> Hi Anup,
> >>
> >> On 8/17/20 11:30 AM, Bin Meng wrote:
> >>> EXTERNAL EMAIL: Do not click links or open attachments unless you know the content is safe
> >>>
> >>> Hi Anup,
> >>>
> >>> On Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 1:44 AM Anup Patel <anup@brainfault.org> wrote:
> >>>> On Fri, Aug 14, 2020 at 10:12 PM Bin Meng <bmeng.cn@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>> From: Bin Meng <bin.meng@windriver.com>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> This adds support for Microchip PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit board.
> >>>>> The Icicle Kit board integrates a PolarFire SoC, with one SiFive's
> >>>>> E51 plus four U54 cores and many on-chip peripherals and an FPGA.
> >>>> Nice Work !!! This is very helpful.
> >>> Thanks!
> >>>
> >>>> The Microchip HSS is quite convoluted. It has:
> >>>> 1. DDR Init
> >>>> 2. Boot device support
> >>>> 3. SBI support using OpenSBI as library
> >>>> 4. Simple TEE support
> >>>>
> >>>> I think point 1) and 2) above should be part of U-Boot SPL.
> >>>> The point 3) can be OpenSBI FW_DYNAMIC.
> >>>>
> >>>> Lastly,for point 4), we are working on a new OpenSBI feature using
> >>>> which we can run independent Secure OS and Non-Secure OS using
> >>>> U-Boot_SPL+OpenSBI (for both SiFive Unleashed and Microchip
> >>>> PolarFire).
> >>>>
> >>>> Do you have plans for adding U-Boot SPL support for this board ??
> >>> + Cyril Jean from Microchip
> >>>
> >>> I will have to leave this question to Cyril to comment.
> >>>
> >> I currently do not have a plan to support U-Boot SPL. The idea of the
> >> HSS is to contain all the silicon specific initialization and
> >> configuration code within the HSS before jumping to U-Boot S-mode. I
> >> would rather keep all this within the HSS for the time being. I would
> >> wait until we reach production silicon before attempting to move this to
> >> U-Boot SPL as the HSS is likely to contain some opaque silicon related
> >> changes for another while.
> > That is unfortunate, a lot of work has gone into making the boot flow
> > simple and easy to use.
> >
> > QEMU now includes OpenSBI by default to make it easy for users to boot
> > Linux. The Icicle Kit board is now the most difficult QEMU board to
> > boot Linux on. Not to mention it makes it hard to impossible to
> > support it in standard tool flows such as meta-riscv.
> >
> > Alistair
>
> If it is such a problem we can add a U-Boot SPL stage and the HSS can be
> treated as standard SoC ROM code.

It's not mandatory for U-Boot SPL to have stable DRAM calibration settings
from the start itself. The initial U-Boot SPL support for most
platforms (accross
architectures) usually include basic working DRAM calibration settings which
is later on updated with separate patches. Also, we don't need all U-Boot
drivers to be upstreamed in one-go as this can be done in phases.

The advantage we have with PolarFire SoC Icicle board is that we already
have a U-Boot S-mode. and we believe the OpenSBI generic platform will
work fine for PolarFire SoC Icicle board so the only thing missing right now
is the U-Boot SPL support for OpenSource boot-flow.

It will certainly accelerate open-source development if we have boot-flow
U-Boot_SPL => OpenSBI (FW_DYNAMIC) => U-Boot_S-mode working
on PolarFire SoC Icicle board. Initially, we just need DRAM, SD/eMMC,
and Serial port support for U-Boot SPL and U-Boot S-mode. Later on,
more patches can add ethernet and other booting device drivers to U-Boot.

Regarding security services of HSS, we are working on a OpenSBI
feature which will allow HSS security services to run as independent
binary in M-mode (not linked to OpenSBI) and OpenSBI FW_DYNAMIC
will be a separate binary acting as a secure monitor.

Regards,
Anup