[U-Boot-Users] U-Boot-NG ?

[Grant Likely]

On 7/4/07, Robert Schwebel <r.schwebel at pengutronix.de> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 09:36:03AM -0600, Grant Likely wrote:
> > > If you do not use statically initialized pointer on startup and running
> > > at the link address after startup, you do not need to fixup anything.
> >
> > ... assuming that the u-boot design goal is changed to use a static
> > relocation address instead of the detected end of RAM.
>
> Can you elaborate the use case for that scenario?

Not all boards have a fixed amount of RAM.  Some boards have a DIMM
slot, and some boards have variants with differing RAM sizes.  U-boot
is designed to always exist at the end of available RAM, so with those
boards u-boot calculates where the end of ram is, relocates itself
there and fixes up the pointer references to point to the new
location.  To do this, u-boot must be compiled as position independent
code (-fPIC) and with with relocation tables.

Cheers,
g.

-- 
Grant Likely, B.Sc., P.Eng.
Secret Lab Technologies Ltd.
grant.likely at secretlab.ca
(403) 399-0195