Multi-platform, and secure-only ARM errata workarounds
From: Stephen Warren <hidden>
Date: 2013-02-26 16:39:15
Also in:
linux-tegra
On 02/26/2013 02:36 AM, Marc Dietrich wrote:
Stephen, Am Montag, 25. Februar 2013, 16:47:38 schrieb Stephen Warren:quoted
I'm looking into enabling CONFIG_MULTIPLATFORM on Tegra for 3.10, and the main blocking issue is due to commit 62e4d35 "ARM: 7609/1: disable errata work-arounds which access secure registers". Various Tegra versions need 3 of those workarounds, and our bootloader doesn't implement them (at the least, upstream U-Boot; not sure about our downstream code, but I'm fairly sure given the lack of any feedback I got in the bug I filed to implement them). Now, I can easily add those 3 errata workarounds to U-Boot, but that will require people to reflash their bootloader. This is probably acceptable for development/reference boards (although I'm sure people will find it annoying) but for re-purposed production boards (such as the Toshiba AC100 or various tablets) it will be impossible to update the factory bootloader. Switching to upstream U-Boot would currently lose some functionality, and significantly affect people's boot flow, so is likely unacceptable.personally, I have no problem to require a certain u-boot version for a given kernel. From a distro point of view, you will likely update the bootloader/kernel on a distro update anyway.
So a distro will certainly update the kernel. But updating a bootloader would be very unusual, I believe. Also, I hope that upstream U-Boot is never going to support the bizarre "Tegra partition table" cruft that our "fastboot" bootloader supports, so you'll end up completely re-programming the flash (BCT, bootloader, partition table, all filesystems) if you want to switch to U-Boot. That seems like a fair chunk for the installer to own, but I guess if you're comfortable with doing that, I won't complain.