Introduction If somebody would tell 7 years ago that Intel will support open source firmware, he would be laughed at instantly. If we recall time, like 15 years ago where the datasheets were more open and were sufficient to write open source firmware, today it is not possible. Silicon vendors are hiding the intellectual property contained in the processors. It would seem like the open source firmware is doomed, but…
Introduction Software testing is very important in every type of project to ensure the quality reaches the desired level and the product is in a production state. Unlike software testing, firmware testing does not only verify whether the code behaves as it is supposed to, but also covers functional verification if the hardware works as it should. It makes firmware validation much harder than any software application as we may face many unexpected and not always reproducible issues.
This post summarizes our current progress on making first coreboot port for POWER platform*, including Heads as a payload. It will also show how You can test it without having to actually flash firmware to PNOR permanently.
Description of OpenPOWER boot process and coreboot’s place in it can be found in previous post under OpenPOWER tag.
*) there is already a target for qemu-power8 that compiles successfully, but it executes just a single instruction: b .
Introduction Today’s computing systems and processors are becoming more and more efficient but closed as well. Closed in terms of documentation, closed in terms of free and open-source software and firmware. The x86 silicon vendors are striving for security by obscurity, falling deeper into the pit they created themselves, bound by laws that were supposed to protect them. As a result open-source firmware community has to struggle and push vendors into openness or to provide means to run open firmware on their products.
