[U-Boot] [PATCH] Separate EBV Socrates board from Altera Cyclone 5 board

[Chin Liang See]

Hi,

> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> Currently, the SOCFPGA SPL is customized through a set of handoff files
> >>> which located at board folders. These handoff files are generated by
> >>> tools based on board and user design in FPGA. With that, not much
> >>> decision being made during run time based on the board. With this
> >>> handoff and tools approach, it will shield off the complexity of
> >>> hardware configuration and errors (if user change it manually without
> >>> tools help). Thanks
> >>
> >> Which nice copy of our approach. :-)
> > 
> > Hmmm... is it true? This approach being used since few years back at
> > NIOS soft processor. Besides that, we are utilizing the SPL framework
> > for our second stage boot loader. I believe you guys are not using SPL
> > right? It seems you guys would need tools to generate and even build you
> > guys own version of boot loader. It creates high dependency for user to
> > your tools. 
> 
> Interesting discussion. :-)
> I believe we will use SPL at some point in future for Microblaze
> just because of easier maintenance . But will see.

Yup, utilizing SPL will gain you the power of open source :)

> 
> I don't understand your point regarding to tool dependency. For DTSes
> I believe you are also generating this structure from design tools
> or you can write it by hand.
> We are also generating U-boot configuration but if someone wants to write
> it by hand they can.

I believe we have misalignment on the term used. For us, second stage
bootloader is referring to the bootloader loaded by BootROM. I believe
you guys are referring that as FSBL. 

> > For our solution, customer can just grab the code from git and build it
> > using the normal U-Boot way (if they don't want to use the tools). With
> > the SPL also, we are taking advantage of open source community power to
> > make our second stage boot loader more powerful and user friendly to
> > user. Our user can grab any drivers or leverage the supports from the
> > open community too. I believe that is the power of open source :) 
> 
> We have the same for Microblaze and Zynq.

Same as above, I believe both of us are using U-Boot. But for bootloader
before U-Boot, we are using SPL while you guys using FSBL which is not
SPL framework, right? With that, I believe you guys would need a
proprietary tools to compile and build the FSBL. We would not have this
dependency when building the SPL code.

Thanks
Chin Liang

> 
> Cheers,
> Michal
>