[coreboot] RFC: Coreboot support of SFI

[Stefan Reinauer]

On 12/30/10 8:58 AM, Michael Cassaniti wrote:
> Hi All,
> After seeing a Request For Comments previously in the mailing list, I
> thought I might add my own.
>
> I am curious to know if it worth while for the coreboot project to
> support the Simple Firmware Interface. A quick Google search should be
> all you need. I am under the impression that SFI and ACPI could become
> KConfig style options for coreboot, allowing the end user to choose if
> SFI or ACPI should be built into coreboot.
>
> The only other question remaining is what would be missing to run
> Linux unhindered on systems using SFI? Having a quick look, I don't
> see too much missing. SFI seems simple enough to make available to
> other (non-x86) platforms for new firmware.
SFI is only a niche solution for one or two of Intel's embedded
platforms. None of which we support. Many of SFIs tables are actually
ACPI tables, with the biggest change that there is no DSDT. Plus, most
systems don't support it. Linux even prefers ACPI if it finds ACPI and SFI.

I don't see much benefit in supporting SFI. It's not too much work
either, but if you're going to spend time on tables, it might be better
invested in having mptables, pirq tables and ACPI interrupt sources
generated from the same data source in devicetree.cb
(After that, SFI would be even more trivial, and not end up in having to
adapt and test SFI for each mainboard)

Stefan