[U-Boot] [Question] How is the Falcon mode working

[Frank Ihle]

Hi U-Boot,

you recently gave me the hint about the Falcon Mode for my Fast Booting investigations. But I think might got it wrong, could somebody correct me if so?:

- According to the "Falcon Mode" Pdf of October 2013 (http://www.denx.de/wiki/pub/U-Boot/MiniSummitELCE2013/2013-ELCE-U-Boot-Falcon-Boot.pdf) The Falcon mode is just about to chose 2 different execution modes during startup - one that starts Linux directly (and skips u-boot) and the other for instance to make updates, or failsafe mode (and starts u-boot). Or does it even contain more functionality ?

- According to the "Minimizing boot times using U-Boot Falcon Mode" Pdf of July 2012 
(http://schedule2012.rmll.info/IMG/pdf/LSM2012_UbootFalconMode_Babic.pdf) it's mentioned that this can only run with boards, which are able to work with SPL. I guess here SPL means Second Programm Bootloader. I'm not an expert in this area, but wouldn't it be possible to run every board with an SPL, since it's just Software like a Bootloader? And if not what is the "real" eye of the needle here ? I'm just asking because I didn't get the problem here.

Thanks for your time

Kind Regards

Frank