Just to report on preliminary findings I had:
Rebasing my current TOP9000 port on u-boot/master compiles and works fine. Code size increased moderately from 223592 to 223976.
Rebasing my current TOP9000 port on u-boot/next compiles after defining CONFIG_SYS_SDRAM_BASE and CONFIG_SYS_INIT_SP_ADDR. Code size increased heavyly from 223592 to 245544.
And U-Boot crashes instantly (I know there is more to be done than just defining those two macros).
What bothers me really here is the huge increase in code size.
And, on almost all AT91 systems booting will be through a first boot loader, which sets up SDRAM, loads u-boot to the "correct" address and jumps to it. All low level init and relocation is not required in such cases.
It should be always possible to #define relocation off!
With Best Regards Reinhard