2023-10-11 –, Main Track
Overview of how to use U-Boot as a coreboot payload and the benefits of doing so
[since this is mostly an x86/coreboot conference the talk will centre around that]
Coreboot provides platform initialisation, replacing much of the closed-source BIOS / UEFI on x86 machines. However coreboot does not include a means to boot an OS by itself. It is designed to jump into a payload to handle that, such as Tianocore.
U-Boot is one payload supported by coreboot. It provides many of the same features as Tianocore but with a number of advantages: small and fast, GPLv2 code base, Linux compatibility and a very active community.
This talk covers some of the ways that U-Boot can be used on x86, including booting common distros out of the box using its UEFI layer. The talk covers the command line, with features including advanced boot control, filesystems, networking / wget, configuration editor and a range of commands and features for use specifically with coreboot.
The talk provides a comparison of U-Boot and Tianocore with coreboot and some discussion of what is missing on the U-Boot side. It concludes with a demo.
Simon Glass has worked in embedded systems for many years, at ARM, Bluewater Systems (which he founded) and Google. In ChromeOS, Simon is responsible for driving adoption of Open Source firmware components in the industry ecosystem. He is a primary contributor to U-Boot and custodian of its driver model, with around 8000 commits in total. Simon is married with three children and lives in Colorado.