[U-Boot-Users] RFC: Booting the Linux/ppc64 kernel without Open Firmware HOWTO

[Marius Groeger]

On Fri, 20 May 2005, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:

> Ok, I got some numbers here. (I have removed the page alignment

Thanks!

I think we'll just have to try all that out for ourselves. Simple 
boards will probably be at the lower end of your figures, which 
*should* be fine for most people.

How do you view this, though: couldn't it happen in the future, once 
the dev-tree has been widely established, that more and more drivers 
are converted to pull their properties off the tree, because it is so 
convenient? That *could* lead to rising expectations toward the 
firmware, and make what once was a small blob a big blob. Is it 
reasonable to assume drivers will #ifdef such behaviour?

Again, I'm just thinking here, no opinions yet. Well, if you want one: 
<opinion> Actually I always liked the idea of clever firmware, which 
usually knows the underlying hardware best. </opinion>

> - The complete device-tree of my PowerMac laptop (this is _huge_, Apple
> puts a _lot_ of stuff in there, way more than most embedded board even
> the most complex ones will ever need) fits into a 37k blob.

Don't underestimate embedded hardware. The MPC5554 has 286(!) 
selectable-priority interrupt sources... :-)

Cheers,
Marius

-- 
Marius Groeger <mgroeger at sysgo.com>
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