On Thu, Sep 17, 2015 at 03:42:39PM -0500, Nishanth Menon wrote:
Many System on Chip(SoC) solutions are complex with multiple processors on the same die dedicated to either general purpose of specialized functions. Many examples do exist in today's SoCs from various vendors. Typical examples are micro controllers such as an ARM M3/M0 doing a offload of specific function such as event integration or power management or controlling camera etc.
Traditionally, the responsibility of loading up such a processor with a firmware and communication has been with a High Level Operating System(HLOS) such as Linux. However, there exists classes of products where Linux would need to expect services from such a processor or the delay of Linux and operating system being able to load up such a firmware is unacceptable.
To address these needs, we need some minimal capability to load such a system and ensure it is started prior to an Operating System(Linux or any other) is started up.
NOTE: This is NOT meant to be a solve-all solution, instead, it tries to address certain class of SoCs and products that need such a solution.
A very simple model is introduced here as part of the initial support that supports microcontrollers with internal memory (no MMU, no execution from external memory, or specific image format needs). This basic framework can then (hopefully) be extensible to other complex SoC processor support as need be.
Reviewed-by: Simon Glass sjg@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Nishanth Menon nm@ti.com Acked-by: Simon Glass sjg@chromium.org
Applied to u-boot/master, thanks!