3 ms·

PC BIOS and UEFI are a mess as well. They are proprietary blobs guarded by Intel and alike. At least ARM had most bootloading open with uBoot, for example. Also

by xvilka 5y ago

PC BIOS and UEFI are a mess as well. They are proprietary blobs guarded by Intel and alike. At least ARM had most bootloading open with uBoot, for example. Also PC firmware code on modern platforms is often bigger than Linux kernel. Hardly a good example. I sincerely hope RISC-V will avoid relying on UEFI and opt out for something more sensible.

rwmj 5y ago
Not really. Arm boards only work with uBoot because of a vast behind-the-scenes effort to integrate all the crappy forks and out of tree kernel drivers into Linux distros.
potiuper 5y ago
GPU resizable bar requires UEFI.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  It has no hard requirement to be on UEFI rather it isn't compatible with legacy BIOS.
  - potiuper 5y ago
    "Hard requirement" is a vague. At this moment in time no commercially available non-UEFI hardware exists to run GPUs supporting resizable bar.
zamadatix 5y ago
There are solid open implementations of UEFI, one has actually been ported to the Pis and can boot Windows and Linux and so on.
aseipp 5y ago
Many PC UEFI builds from mega manufacturers are heavily customized, but a lot of them are also just based on TianoCore, including the modern RPi UEFI firmware builds. Nothing very strange about it. More specifically, the distinguishing thing here for RISC-V is the standardization of SBI, which will be a requirement for either UEFI or U-Boot to target it. U-Boot works on the million ARM devices it does today thanks to absurd effort from many people, not because ARM made it especially easy; with SBI in theory that can be made easier. Aside from that people can argue whether UEFI is bloated and how their favorite is the perfect alternative, but as a user who would want to boot a RISC-V based desktop platform (and someone who has supported RISC-V, implemented their own designs, etc) I don't care and it doesn't matter; it actually does the job, and is a known quantity to aim for i.e. familiar and at least nominally understood by developers, users, and manufacturers. And I say that as someone who actually likes U-Boot and has patched it on a few occasions myself for my own targets.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  > I don't care and it doesn't matter you can not care, but it does matter

by xvilka 5y ago

rwmj 5y ago

Not really. Arm boards only work with uBoot because of a vast behind-the-scenes effort to integrate all the crappy forks and out of tree kernel drivers into Linux distros.

potiuper 5y ago

GPU resizable bar requires UEFI.

zamadatix 5y ago
It has no hard requirement to be on UEFI rather it isn't compatible with legacy BIOS.
- potiuper 5y ago
  "Hard requirement" is a vague. At this moment in time no commercially available non-UEFI hardware exists to run GPUs supporting resizable bar.

zamadatix 5y ago

There are solid open implementations of UEFI, one has actually been ported to the Pis and can boot Windows and Linux and so on.

aseipp 5y ago

Many PC UEFI builds from mega manufacturers are heavily customized, but a lot of them are also just based on TianoCore, including the modern RPi UEFI firmware builds. Nothing very strange about it. More specifically, the distinguishing thing here for RISC-V is the standardization of SBI, which will be a requirement for either UEFI or U-Boot to target it. U-Boot works on the million ARM devices it does today thanks to absurd effort from many people, not because ARM made it especially easy; with SBI in theory that can be made easier. Aside from that people can argue whether UEFI is bloated and how their favorite is the perfect alternative, but as a user who would want to boot a RISC-V based desktop platform (and someone who has supported RISC-V, implemented their own designs, etc) I don't care and it doesn't matter; it actually does the job, and is a known quantity to aim for i.e. familiar and at least nominally understood by developers, users, and manufacturers. And I say that as someone who actually likes U-Boot and has patched it on a few occasions myself for my own targets.

mistrial9 5y ago
> I don't care and it doesn't matter you can not care, but it does matter