[PATCH 00/10] SMBIOS improvements

[Simon Glass]

Hi Raymond,

On Fri, 16 Aug 2024 at 09:47, Raymond Mao <raymond.mao at linaro.org> wrote:
>
> Motivations for changes:
> Current SMBIOS library and command-line tool is not fully matching with
> the requirements:
> 1. Missing support for other mandatory types (#7, #9, #16, #17, #19).
> 2. Only a few platforms support SMBIOS node from the device tree.
> 3. Values of some fields are hardcoded in the library other than fetching
>    from the device hardware.
> 4. Embedded data with dynamic length is not supported (E.g. Contained
>    Object Handles in Type #2 and Contained Elements in Type #3)
>
> Changes:
> 1. Refactor the SMBIOS library and command-line tool to better align with
>    the SMBIOS spec.
> 2. Create an arch-specific driver for all aarch64-based platforms to fetch
>    SMBIOS private data from the device hardware.
> 3. Create a sysinfo driver to poppulate platform SMBIOS private data.
> 4. Put device tree SMBIOS node as a fallback solution when SMBIOS data is
>    missing from sysinfo driver.
> 5. Add support for Type #7 (Cache Information) and link its handles to
>    Type #4.
>
> Once this patch is acceptted, subsequent patch sets will add other missing
> types (#9, #16, #17, #19).
>
> Raymond Mao (10):
>   sysinfo: Add sysinfo API for accessing data area
>   sysinfo: Add sysinfo driver and data structure for SMBIOS
>   smbios: Refactor SMBIOS library
>   smbios: ignore the non-existence of platform sysinfo detect
>   armv8: Add arch-specific sysinfo driver
>   sysinfo: Add sysinfo driver for SMBIOS type 7
>   smbios: Add support to SMBIOS type 7
>   armv8: Add sysinfo driver for cache information
>   configs: Enable sysinfo for QEMU Arm64
>   tests: update smbios pytest
>
>  arch/arm/cpu/armv8/Makefile      |   5 +
>  arch/arm/cpu/armv8/sysinfo.c     | 391 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  cmd/smbios.c                     | 350 ++++++++++++++++++++++-
>  configs/qemu_arm64_defconfig     |   2 +
>  drivers/misc/Kconfig             |   2 +-
>  drivers/sysinfo/Makefile         |   1 +
>  drivers/sysinfo/smbios_plat.c    | 442 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  drivers/sysinfo/smbios_plat.h    | 131 +++++++++
>  drivers/sysinfo/sysinfo-uclass.c |  20 ++
>  include/smbios.h                 | 240 ++++++++++++++--
>  include/sysinfo.h                | 124 ++++++++-
>  lib/Makefile                     |   2 +
>  lib/smbios.c                     | 461 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
>  test/py/tests/test_smbios.py     |   2 +-
>  14 files changed, 2058 insertions(+), 115 deletions(-)
>  create mode 100644 arch/arm/cpu/armv8/sysinfo.c
>  create mode 100644 drivers/sysinfo/smbios_plat.c
>  create mode 100644 drivers/sysinfo/smbios_plat.h
>
> --
> 2.25.1
>

As a general comment, this is adding a load of code which is used by a
lot of platforms. As more and more aarch64 platforms are created, this
data grows. Why not use the devicetree for this hardware information?
That is what it is for.

Some of the information detected makes sense, such as cache setup, but
some of it seems like an approximation, or is missing, but suggests it
is authoritative.

Regards,
Simon