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From: Timur Tabi <timur@freescale.com>
To: u-boot@lists.denx.de
Subject: [U-Boot] QE firmware/microcode handling
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:22:21 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <505B34AD.7070801@freescale.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <505AE6C3.5080708@keymile.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

  parent reply	other threads:[~2012-09-20 15:22 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 12+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2012-09-20  9:49 [U-Boot] QE firmware/microcode handling Gerlando Falauto
2012-09-20 15:16 ` Wolfgang Denk
2012-09-20 15:22 ` Timur Tabi [this message]
2012-09-20 18:24   ` Scott Wood
2012-09-20 21:28     ` Timur Tabi
2012-09-21  1:55       ` McClintock Matthew-B29882
2012-09-21  8:32   ` [U-Boot] [PATCH] SBx81CFC960: embed Fman microcode in the bootloader judge.packham at gmail.com
2012-09-21 11:32     ` Tabi Timur-B04825
2012-09-21 15:58     ` Wolfgang Denk
2012-09-21 16:30       ` Timur Tabi
2012-09-22  9:44       ` Chris Packham
2012-09-24 14:25         ` Timur Tabi

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