[U-Boot] uboot for ARRIA10 SoC

[Spinelli, Claudio (Nokia - US/Murray Hill)]

Hi Dan, 

Using arria10 with socfpga_v2014.10_arria10_bringup tag, I would like to determine, after an uboot reset or linux reboot, If both periph and core fpga images need to be loaded into the fpga again. Basically determine if the fpga images survive a warm reboot. 
Do you know if there is already a function in uboot to check if periph and/or core images are loaded into fpga. 
 Thanks 
Claudio

-----Original Message-----
From: Friedrich Daniel [mailto:friedrich at nanosurf.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2018 1:41 AM
To: Spinelli, Claudio (Nokia - US/Murray Hill) <claudio.spinelli at nokia.com>; u-boot at lists.denx.de
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel at denx.de>
Subject: RE: uboot for ARRIA10 SoC


> I am using Intel/Altera REF board: Arria 10 SoC development kit  part number  DK-SOC-10AS066S-A. I am using Altera/Intel tools to generate an uboot image which include the devictree.dts and it is build with > mkpimage.
> Has anybody ported the Altera/Intel Arria 10Soc to the open source uboot and able to build an uboot image using open source uboot and open source toolchain?
> Thanks
> Claudio

Hello Claudio,

I tried it as well and failed. My personal guess is that Altera/Intel never pushed proper support into the official u-boot mainline.
Even there master-branch (https://github.com/altera-opensource/u-boot-socfpga/tree/master) does not work. For "just a user" it is very frustrating getting a new board abut have to use old software.
And it seems Intel does not care in providing documentation, up-to-date software or maintaining the released code.
For example if you look closer into the source code in the socfpga_v2014.10_arria10_bringup-branch there is a module called cff which loads the rbf-file in early release mode.
I could  not find anything similar in the latest branches(neither from denx not altera). Also the images generated from the latest releases generates not the proper format needed to boot from an Arria10.

So for my needs I used (https://github.com/altera-opensource/u-boot-socfpga/tree/socfpga_v2014.10_arria10_bringup) which is the version used in the Altera/Intel tools But changed it to my needs (loading rbf-file, kernel and devicetree from EXT, setting u-boot environment to my needs etc.) I compile everything with the toolchain from yocto V2.4. and so far it works good.
My changes are made public here(https://github.com/nanosurf-ag/u-boot-socfpga) but this might still subject to change.

Hope this helps
dan