[coreboot] [GSoC-2015] Interested in Participating - Discussing Ideas

[Varad Gautam]

Hi Marc,

On 03/06/15 at 06:26 PM Marc Jones <marcj303 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Varad,
> 
> Welcome! It is great to hear that you are interested in coreboot GSoC.
> 
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 8:44 AM Varad Gautam <varadgautam at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I would like to participate in Google Summer of Code 2015 with coreboot to
> > work on one of the following ideas:
> > 
> > - Enable coreboot + Tianocore over an ARM board: The Ideas page mentions
> > something similar [1], but I think the hardware details are to be
> > finalized. I
> > worked on adding BeagleBone Black support to Tianocore during GSoC-2014
> > with
> > Linaro, and so have some experience with JTAG, ARM bringup and
> > bootloaders.
> > Which mainboard would be the intended target? I have a HiKey board
> > (HiSilicon
> > Kirin 6220 Cortex-A53 ARM64) [2] which could be used - I'm checking if
> > coreboot already supports a similar SoC to base the port on.
> 
> There are a number of ARM SOCs in development that are being merged from
> chromium.org (chromebook). Take a look at src/soc and src/arch. This is a
> pretty big task, but might be a good match if you have done some similar
> work in past projects.

I will look into it, thanks.

> 
> > - Eliminate Video BIOS requirement for AMD/ATI graphics init: I understand
> > this would involve dumping AtomBIOS ROM and performing those
> > initializations
> > under coreboot. I came across atomdis [3] and am looking for a Video BIOS
> > ROM
> > I could try disassembling. I need some input on how I could go about the
> > implementation of this idea - what hardware would be suitable / what the
> > boot
> > flow would be. Although I haven't worked with the Linux graphics stack
> > yet, I
> > would like to get my hands dirty. I am currently looking through the
> > resources
> > at [4].
> 
> You might look at Gizmo2.

I dumped the BIOS binary for a Radeon GPU and am trying to make sense of it 
using the atombios kernel header [1] - are there any resources on ATOMBIOS 
internals I can use? I believe the GPU initialization can be done by tracing 
the dump contents as suggested in this thread [2], but cannot figure how new 
ATOMBIOS tables would be created and used. I also need to check the coreboot 
source to plan how this can be implemented.

> 
> > I recently tried running coreboot + SeaBIOS + SYSLINUX under QEMU (as
> > suggested on the Easy tasks page [5]), and it seems to work alright - but
> > is
> > it possible to find a SYSLINUX ELF image so I can eliminate SeaBIOS?
> 
> I don't know if anyone has made a SYSLINUX elf. Any small kernelvmlinuz and
> initrd could be used.
> http://www.coreboot.org/QEMU_Build_Tutorial#Building_a_Linux_kernel_payload
> 
> > I would be glad to have your suggestions on how I could get started.
> 
> You can join #coreboot on IR and , start looking at the patches on Gerrit
> and get a feel for what is being developed.
> 
> Again, Welcome!
> Marc
> 

Thanks! Are there any 'easy' bugs / features I could implement to get familiar 
with the development process?


[1] http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/atombios.h
[2] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2013-March/075522.html

Thanks,
Varad

> > [1] http://www.coreboot.org/Project_Ideas#coreboot_ARM_
> > SoC.27s_mainboard_port
> > [2] https://www.96boards.org/products/hikey/
> > [3]
> > http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_
> > atombios_dumper&num=1
> > [4] http://www.coreboot.org/Project_Ideas#Native_graphics_init
> > [5] http://www.coreboot.org/Easy_projects#Add.2Ftest_new_
> > supported_payloads
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Varad
> > 
> > --
> > coreboot mailing list: coreboot at coreboot.org
> > http://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot