Hi,

The patch attached adds support for the NXP Semiconductors (former Philips Semiconductors) PNX8550 SoC to U-Boot. As a target, the SilverBox development target (config_silverbox) has been added.

The PNX8550 SoC contains a PR4450 MIPS core, a Philips implementation of a MIPS32 processor. This patch will work on later - MIPS 4KEc based - SoCs such as the PNX8535 and PNX8836 too, but there's no specific configuration for those available yet. Serious rework of the MIPS lowlevel code is required for that. Therefore the PNX8550 and PNX8535 U-Boot does not run cached, but it does run in the cached memory segment.

For proper MIPS32 cache support significant rework of start.S and cache.S is needed. We opted not to do this at this time as that may break existing MIPS based boards. It is our intention to submit MIPS32 architecture compliant versions of these when the PNX8550/PNX8535 board support is in U-Boot. This will also include proper MIPS exception handling, something sorely missing.

The PNX8550 and PNX8535 are SoCs that are part of the NXP Semiconductors Nexperia product line. NXP sells over 6,000,000 of these SoCs annually. They are used in high-end TV sets, set-top boxes and PVRs.

With kind regards,

Robert Deliën.