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Still no sign of an actual Technical Reference Manual or any other detailed documentation on the SoC (registers, peripherals, etc). A big pile of Linux patches
by swetland 4y ago
Still no sign of an actual Technical Reference Manual or any other detailed documentation on the SoC (registers, peripherals, etc). A big pile of Linux patches, while better than nothing, is a poor substitute for actual documentation.
SiFive does provide docs for the core complex (processors, cache, irq controller, etc), but that doesn't cover any SoC-specific peripherals.
- progbits 4y agoAgreed. But I feel like that is still a step ahead of RPi where you get random firmware blobs for the GPU without which it won't even boot.
- swetland 4y agoIt's definitely nicer to have source than a bunch of opaque binaries. (Is there source for the full boot path? Sounds like they have patches for OpenSBI and u-boot -- didn't see if there was source or docs for the on-die boot rom.) I just find the "all you need is Linux patches" approach annoying. There are BSD variants and little experimental and homebrew OSes out there that would be fun to run on a capable RISC-V SBC and even if you are using Linux it's still nice to have some documentation to refer to beyond whatever the silicon vendor implemented in various driver patches.