Document U-Boot multi-processor support as well as configuration tables like SFI and MP tables for SMP OS kernel.
Signed-off-by: Bin Meng bmeng.cn@gmail.com
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Changes in v2: - New patch to update README.x86 for SMP support
doc/README.x86 | 13 +++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+)
diff --git a/doc/README.x86 b/doc/README.x86 index c19f4a0..49d6e83 100644 --- a/doc/README.x86 +++ b/doc/README.x86 @@ -258,6 +258,17 @@ Modern CPUs usually require a special bit stream called microcode [6] to be loaded on the processor after power up in order to function properly. U-Boot has already integrated these as hex dumps in the source tree.
+SMP Support +----------- +On a multicore system, U-Boot is executed on the bootstrap processor (BSP). +Additional application processors (AP) can be brought up by U-Boot. In order to +have an SMP kernel to discover all of the available processors, U-Boot needs to +prepare configuration tables which contain the multi-CPUs information before +loading the OS kernel. Currently U-Boot supports generating two types of tables +for SMP, called Simple Firmware Interface (SFI) [7] and Multi-Processor (MP) [8] +tables. The writing of these two tables are controlled by two Kconfig options +GENERATE_SFI_TABLE and GENERATE_MP_TABLE. + Driver Model ------------ x86 has been converted to use driver model for serial and GPIO. @@ -362,3 +373,5 @@ References [4] http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/embedded/design-tools/evaluation-plat... [5] http://www.intel.com/fsp [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcode +[7] http://simplefirmware.org +[8] http://www.intel.com/design/archives/processors/pro/docs/242016.htm