[U-Boot] [PATCH 48/69] x86: Add support for running Intel reference code

[Simon Glass]

Hi Bin,

On 11 March 2016 at 00:29, Bin Meng <bmeng.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Simon,
>
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Simon Glass <sjg at chromium.org> wrote:
>> Intel has invented yet another binary blob which firmware is required to
>> run. This is run after SDRAM is ready. It is linked to load at a particular
>> address, typically 0, but is a relocatable ELF so can be moved if required.
>>
>
> This is really bad!
>
>> Add support for this in the build system. The file should be placed in the
>> board directory, and called refcode.elf.
>
> Is there any public documentation that explains this binary blob? Is
> this blob supposed to hide any top-secret of their chipset?! Why not
> just a single FSP binary? I fail to understand Intel's firmware
> strategy given they seem to actively promote FSP.

Not that i know of. Samus doesn't use FSP, although I suspect it might
be possible. I'm really not sure which is worse.

I don't know if the chipset has top-secret stuff. It might just be
that they don't want to release the source code, or spend lots of time
writing documentation. I really don't know.

[snip]

Regards,
Simon