[coreboot] Tester devices [was: QA contribution]

Juhana Helovuo juhe at iki.fi
Wed Feb 2 09:25:52 CET 2011


[ Note: There seems to be something wrong with mailing list delivery. I 
did not receive this Peter's latest message at all, but found it in the 
mailing list archive instead. Other coreboot lists messages have arrived 
to my inbox after that. ]

Peter Stuge wrote:

>> Flash emulator would be nice, but emulating a SPI flash ROM would
>> require single clock cycle response times for ordinary read
>> commands. There is very little time for the ROM from receiving the
>> last address bit to start transmitting the data.
>
> Yep, an emulator should be SRAM backed.

True, and additionally the controller between SPI and SRAM has to be 
able to react very quickly, which would mean using an FPGA or similar.

A microcontroller would have to have quite a high frequency to be able 
to react to a command within 1 cycle, even at 16 MHz.


> All right. With QFP on the table there's suddenly a whole lot more
> possibilities for the design.

Actully I was surprised myself how good the result with QFP-32 package 
was. However, that is already quite near the limit of my current skills 
and tools.


> OK, so.. Do you like svn or git? Let's set up a repository or two
> for this work.

Good idea! I suppose git would do better for this job, since I expect 
that the development is quite decentralized. Right now I have only the 
prototype board schematics and layout, but I suppose that is already 
better than nothing. Do have a good home for a git repository available?


Best regards,
Juhana Helovuo





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