[LinuxBIOS] AMD Geode LX VSA and VSMs

Peter Stuge stuge-linuxbios at cdy.org
Fri May 4 02:09:42 CEST 2007


On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 09:39:27AM -0600, Jordan Crouse wrote:
> > Would it make sense to move parts or all of the VSM code into the
> > operating system?
> 
> Thats what OFW does for OLPC - and its fraught with danger.  Case
> in point?  A few days ago, the amount of video memory was doubled
> in OFW, to 16MB.  But since the PCI spoofing happens in the kernel,
> it didn't get the message that the video memory changed, and the
> PCI BAR was still sized to 8MB, and X goes boom.

Oh, no, that's not what I meant.

I meant that the code in the kernel would be completely native to the
hardware. No spoofing.


> This is intelligence (or insanity, depending on your point of
> view),

I'm in the latter camp. :p (Even though I understand many of the
benefits.)


> that very much belongs in the firmware - the kernel shouldn't need
> to know how any of this works.

Well it does have drivers and drivers know the hardware behavior so
it can't be all wrong. Life would of course suck if the native
hardware interface is "suboptimal."

I guess this is also why I'm interested in what devices are provided
by the VSMs.


//Peter




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