[U-Boot] kwboot: Boot Marvell Kirkwood SoCs over a serial link.

Daniel Stodden
2012-11-13T07:01:54Z

On Sat, 2012-11-10 at 09:04 -0500, Sam Bulka wrote:
> I understand the advantage of the tool when installed on a PC. But not
> the advantage of adding it to Uboot, since the tool is needed when
> Uboot is broken and doesn't work anymore. How would you use this tool
> from within Uboot, if you can't access Uboot prompt? :) And if you can
> access the prompt, then you can reflash Uboot or change its
> environment without this tool.

Sam,

in case this didn't become clear: the receiving end to which this tool
talks resides in firmware deeply embedded within the SoC. It's a
function specific to Marvell processors, not u-boot, and activated by
talking to the chip before any other software environment is loaded.

These chips support booting from a whole variety of peripheral sources
to load system images from, both SPI flash and UART are just
alternatives. So it's in u-boot as part of the toolchain, not boot
firmware.

Daniel