Messages

1

Firmware / Re: HostBoot VS CoreBoot

« on: August 31, 2021, 05:27:57 pm »

I asked our Firmware Engineers to address the question.

Meanwhile I think it is worth to link here what was posted on other medium about hostboot vs coreboot. Some interesting discussion by MauryG5 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/g5_maury/status/1432333330163376135
Until we will reach reasonable critical mass with education about hostboot vs coreboot we should inform each other about various threads related to OpenPOWER firmware.

2

Firmware / Re: HostBoot VS CoreBoot

« on: August 30, 2021, 03:58:28 pm »

Thanks MauryG5,
of course we are not yet production ready and I'm not sure if boot time would be the most significant improvement. We would definitely like to hear from community what other obstacles or issues were faced with hostboot, if any. From developers perspective this is C++ (hostboot) vs C (coreboot). In our opinion long term maintenance of coreboot code base should be simpler. That potentially means faster integration and bugs resolution. There is also huge potential in marketing. coreboot already cover 10% of laptop, notebook and workstation market - that number growing every year. coreboot inherit LinuxBIOS legacy and is well recognized brand with healthy open source community.

We are sure it will bring new interesting use cases and help OpenPOWER ecosystem to grow.

3

Firmware / Re: coreboot for Talos II and Talos II Lite: we looking for beta testers

« on: August 30, 2021, 05:22:25 am »

I was already contacted by @Borely and @MPC7500, which may be interested in this topic. I will also try to bring Insurgo here which sponsor whole effort. One of the thing I'm looking from community is beta testing, but also content marketing, business intelligence/insights as well as constructive criticism of the project.

From news today I submited "coreboot on POWER9" talk to OpenPOWER Summit 2021 with following abstract:

coreboot is open source firmware development framework that powers more then 10% of desktops, laptops and workstations. It supports multiple architetcures: x86, ARM, ARM64, RISC-V. Bringing it to OpenPOWER means introduction of established and sizable community, diverse economy of licensed service providers as well as less complexity during new hardware integration.

This talk will present the progress of porting the POWER9 architecture to coreboot along with Talos II and Talos II Lite machines (FSF RYF certified). This project became possible with the cooperation of 3mdeb Embedded Systems Consulting and Insurgo Technologies Libres/Open Technologies. We will present problems and hardships encountered during the work and other exciting stories with the initial results of the first hostboot code audit conducted as part of the work. Finally, we will present the current state of the booting process on Talos II using coreboot.

4

Firmware / coreboot for Talos II and Talos II Lite: we looking for beta testers

« on: August 26, 2021, 03:39:07 pm »

Hi all,
as some of you may know 3mdeb works on behalf of Insurgo on porting hostboot to coreboot for Talos II and Talos II Lite. We worked over year on this project and we finally at the stage of looking for beta testers. If you are interested feel free to let us know. Initial steps how you can help us you can find in documentation.

If looking for some argumentation why we doing this our Firmware Engineer Krystian gave good initial justification in this blog post.

5

Firmware / Re: [Events] Talk about coreboot opensource BIOS on POWER + vBeer online party!

« on: August 03, 2021, 06:01:17 am »

I know this reply coming after very long time, but maybe the answer would be useful for some newcomers. Boot sequence and how coreboot fits into it is well described in Michał Żygowski talk at OpenPOWER summit 2020. Let us know if you have any questions.