[U-Boot] [PATCH 10/10] ARM: socfpga: arria10: add support for building Arria10

Chin Liang See clsee at altera.com
Tue Nov 24 04:17:34 CET 2015


On Mon, 2015-11-23 at 17:25 -0600, Dinh Nguyen wrote:
> On 11/23/2015 05:20 PM, Marek Vasut wrote:
> > On Tuesday, November 24, 2015 at 12:04:10 AM, Dinh Nguyen wrote:
> > > On 11/23/2015 05:03 PM, Marek Vasut wrote:
> > > > On Monday, November 23, 2015 at 11:50:15 PM, Dinh Nguyen wrote:
> > > > > On 11/23/2015 04:46 PM, Marek Vasut wrote:
> > > > > > On Monday, November 23, 2015 at 11:32:27 PM, Dinh Nguyen
> > > > > > wrote:
> > > > > > [...]
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > > The main point is that we need to program the
> > > > > > > > > > > FPGA
> > > > > > > > > > > during U-Boot booting up with a ~>10 MB rbf file
> > > > > > > > > > > while being
> > > > > > > > > > > limited to the OCRAM's size. I would like to
> > > > > > > > > > > contain this
> > > > > > > > > > > ugliness in it's own directory.
> > > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > > What's the problem with this ? We already support
> > > > > > > > > > loading files
> > > > > > > > > > from storage in SPL, so just compile the FPGA
> > > > > > > > > > manager into SPL as
> > > > > > > > > > well and use it.
> > > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > > Ok, let me re-work it all under the c5/a5 directory.
> > > > > > > > > Thanks for
> > > > > > > > > reviewing.
> > > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > > But you didn't really answer my question -- what is the
> > > > > > > > problem with
> > > > > > > > the FPGA loader in SPL ?
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > I thought you've already answered your own question. For
> > > > > > > whatever
> > > > > > > reason, the downstream A10 is re-doing the FPGA manager
> > > > > > > just for this
> > > > > > > purpose.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Could the reason be that the FPGA manager in it's current
> > > > > > state expects
> > > > > > one big buffer with the entire FPGA bitstream ? When you're
> > > > > > in SPL and
> > > > > > you still don't have DRAM running, you cannot create such
> > > > > > buffer
> > > > > > anywhere. Thus, what you need to do is to have some sort of
> > > > > > code which
> > > > > > loads a bit of the bitstream file at time and feeds it into
> > > > > > the FPGA
> > > > > > manager, piece by piece. This should be doable pretty
> > > > > > easily, what do
> > > > > > you think ?
> > > > > 
> > > > > That's exactly what is being in the mach-socfpga directory.
> > > > 
> > > > Um, am I missing it in this patchset ?
> > > 
> > > No, you're not missing it, I have not sent it up yet. That
> > > support is in
> > > the downstream, but also with the fpga-manager driver re-written.
> > > I need
> > > to clean this up before I can send it.
> > 
> > OK, thanks :)
> > 
> > > > > Yes, but should that code go into mach-socfpga or drivers?
> > > > 
> > > > The FPGA manager bits are already in drivers/fpga/ , so that's
> > > > where the
> > > > improvements should go. If you need some special handling in
> > > > the SPL,
> > > > that should be in mach-socfpga . In case it's too much change
> > > > to the
> > > > current SPL, moving the spl.c to spl-gen5.c and creating new
> > > > spl-gen10.c
> > > > might make sense ... or something like that, possibly even with
> > > > some
> > > > spl-common.c .
> > > 
> > > Ok. BTW, Arria10 is not using SPL. It has 256K of OCRAM that U
> > > -Boot can
> > > use to setup the SDRAM.
> > 
> > So what do I do if I want to boot arria10 from NAND ? UBI and UBIFS
> > won't
> > fit into 256kiB, so I think using SPL might be the sensible thing
> > afterall,
> > since you would be able to use arbitrarily-sized U-Boot.
> > 
> 
> I hope Chin Liang can chime here, I know that we have support for
> NAND,
> but I haven't been part of that task, so I don't know how it's being
> done.

Finally my email is back online :)

We do have NAND support but not with UBI and UBIFS.
For this support, user can use U-Boot to load arbitrarily-sized U-Boot
that run on SDRAM.

One of the nice thing of U-Boot over SPL is the console support and
ability to troubleshoot.
This is possible with Arria 10 SoC as we have larger OCRAM (256kB vs CV
SoC 64kB).

Thanks
Chin Liang

> 
> Dinh
> 
> 


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