From Reset Vector to Kernel
Navigating the ARM Matryoshka
- Track: Embedded, Mobile and Automotive devroom
- Room: D.embedded
- Day: Saturday
- Start: 13:00
- End: 14:00
- Video with Q&A: D.embedded
- Video only: D.embedded
- Chat: Join the conversation!
Long gone are the times of executing the OS in-place from memory-mapped flash upon reset. A modern SoC now comes with complex mask ROM firmware, with driver, filesystem, protocol and crypto support for loading... yet another bootloader.
In his talk, Ahmad follows this chain of bootloaders until the kernel is started, stopping along the way for RAM setup, peripherial initialization, runtime services and other interesting sights.
Getting acquainted with the bootstrap process on a modern ARM-based SoC can be an intimidating task: Documentation speaks of Boot ROM, blobs, SPL, secure monitor, trusted execution environment, Open Firmware Device Trees all interacting with each other and with a bootloader to facilitate kernel boot.
The talk intends to shed some light onto this. Starting with an overview of the bare minimum needed to bootstrap an i.MX8M, it retraces the steps of the barebox bootloader, and firmware loaded by it, until Linux eventually takes over.
Speakers
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Ahmad Fatoum |