[coreboot] GSoC project ideas

[Svetoslav Trochev]

Hi Carl-Daniel,

I don't qualify as GSoC student (too old ;) ). For sure I can't be
mentor because I am absolute newbie here, but I am interested to find
out If I can help with one of those projects. I know the theory how
those things are working, but I have zero experience. Do you think I
can be useful even if it is outside the GSoC program?

Thanks,
Svetoslav Trochev

On Sat, Mar 10, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
<c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> given the lack of affordable and available hardware tools for coreboot
> development, I propose to look for a different set of projects this
> year: Tools which would help developers, and which are usable especially
> with current hardware. A list of ideas follows.
>
> - Flash ICE device with SPI support.
> - Flash ICE device with LPC/FWH support.
> - Serial emulation for LPC buses on a configurable I/O port with USB
> output on the other side.
> - Dual serial emulation for two LPC buses either on the same device or
> with two identical devices and a fast bus in between.
> - Serial emulation for PCI buses (i.e. PCI/serial card).
>
> The reason for the flash ICE devices is obvious: Avoid external
> reflashing while you're developing.
>
> The serial emulation or similar POST code port emulation is meant to
> provide a serial console, a SerialICE connection and/or some POST code
> output channel. This is especially important for laptops where debugging
> can be a pain and where you usually have a LPC bus available in the
> MiniPCIe slot.
>
> The dual serial emulation for two LPC buses would work as a fast
> PC-to-PC connection for SerialICE and other purposes where you need low
> latency, not necessarily high throughput.
>
> The serial emulation for PCI buses would complement the serial emulation
> for LPC to provide an easy way to connect to a SerialICE instance on the
> other side.
>
> As a basis for all those ideas I'd propose the Openbench logic sniffer.
> It has a fast FPGA, enough gates and roughly 32 kByte RAM. The FPGA is
> fast enough and big enough to accommodate the necessary logic, and we
> could easily attach a fast (66+ MHz) SPI flash chip to it. And with $50
> incl. shipping the OLS is not extremely cheap, but worth its price and
> easily available. Fast flash chips are also available for reasonable prices.
>
> All of those projects would not result in any coreboot code, but they
> would make development easier, and that's a value in itself, especially
> now that we're porting coreboot to laptops where a LPC bus may be the
> only easily available bus at startup.
>
> Comments? Do we have mentors who can review VHDL/Verilog?
>
> Regards,
> Carl-Daniel
>
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