RISC-V UEFI Linux Support Under Review

[phoronix]

Phoronix: RISC-V UEFI Linux Support Under Review

Following Linux's UEFI code getting cleaned up earlier this year in preparation for RISC-V support being added and then some early RISC-V UEFI patches, a more comprehensive set of patches for enabling UEFI support on RISC-V under Linux have been sent out...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...I-Linux-Review

[dxin]

It's quite interesting that RISCV is not following the ARM route but go with UEFI instead.

[Snaipersky]

It's quite interesting that RISCV is not following the ARM route but go with UEFI instead.

Lessons learned. You can support your product on your own for God knows how long, or you can meet a standardized platform and drastically lesson your workload. Look at all the arm boards with terrible support, despite running 99% identical code. Compare to x86. Bios or UEFI, even if messy, didn't require board specific code in the kernel of your OS of choice.

[Space Heater]

It's quite interesting that RISCV is not following the ARM route but go with UEFI instead.

I'd say that in some ways they learned from arm. UEFI support is required for arm's ServerReady compliance program, specifically SBBR. Of course the RISC-V international can't exactly mandate UEFI support any more than arm can. Don't count on UEFI support for arbitrary RISC-V boards.

[LoveRPi]

ARM fully supports UEFI for years now both in u-boot and Linux. Runtime services for UEFI is something separate that even RISC-V boards will not have for a long time since the implementation is board specific. RISC-V also lacks common secure chain of trust infrastructure that ARM already has through Arm Trusted Firmware. RISC-V still has a ways to go in terms of standardized infrastructure.

[Alexmitter]

It's quite interesting that RISCV is not following the ARM route but go with UEFI instead.

I hope you know that this does not mean that you get your clicky UI CMOS Editor like settings or boot menu. Das U-Boot has UEFI support for years.

[Brane215]

Why does RISC-V even need UEFI ?
Who needs that crap anyway ?

[pal666]

It's quite interesting that RISCV is not following the ARM route but go with UEFI instead.

there are arm uefi servers

[starshipeleven]

Why does RISC-V even need UEFI ?
Who needs that crap anyway ?

We are not talking of bloated blob firmware with a HD GUI to change UEFI options with mouse support here, we are talking of the subset of UEFI specification that concerns OS booting and passing information from board firmware to OS in a standard way.

UEFI is the only standard with some form of interoperatibility (i.e. to avoid having each board have its own special way of booting), the most well-known embedded device bootloader (u-boot) can boot in EFI mode