[U-Boot] [RFC 00/11] SYSFW Loader for TI K3 family SoCs using FS Loader

[Andreas Dannenberg]

Hi Tom,

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 07:24:48AM -0400, Tom Rini wrote:
> On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 03:54:43PM -0500, Andreas Dannenberg wrote:
> 
> > This series provides an alternative solution to the previously posted
> > series titled "System Firmware Loader for TI K3 family SoCs" [1] using
> > the existing FS loader driver rather than extending the SPL loader
> > framework like the original patch series. Unlike the original series,
> > it does not support eMMC/SD partition/sector based RAW loading, and
> > it is larger in size.
> > 
> > It is only provided to support the discussion around to the initial
> > series posted as "System Firmware Loader for TI K3 family SoCs" and
> > is not intended to supersede this series, hence it is labeled as
> > "RFC".
> > 
> > The interesting pieces are really in patches 04/11 (extension of
> > FS loader to allow using platform data so one does not have to use
> > either ENV or DTS), and 05/11 which implementes the usage of FS
> > loader, including the required sequence of MMC initialization steps
> > inspired by how SPL does it.
> > 
> > [1] https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2019-May/thread.html#368461
> 
> Andreas, thanks for posting this.
> 
> TF, do you see some way, given this series, to make changes such that
> "fs_loader" can be made smaller?  And support more of Andreas' use cases
> than it does here?  Thanks!

I'm not sure FS loader can be made much smaller but I'm more concerned
how it would scale if I were to add support for the other boot modes we
need such as eMMC/SD raw mode, QSPI/OSPI, Y-Modem, and others to come.

For all of those we have a solution in production similar to what was
proposed here [1] tapping into the SPL loader framework at (almost) zero
cost. Growing FS loader beyond what it is today plus adding in the
support for runtime-selection of firmware load media all added up may
quickly become prohibitive for very space constrained scenarios like on
our AM654x devices.

--
Andreas Dannenberg
Texas Instruments Inc

[1] https://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2019-May/thread.html#368461