Hi Jakub & Jakub, On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Jakub Jermar <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello Jakub, > > On 25.7.2013 1:58, Jakub Klama wrote: >> My name is Jakub Klama and I'm 24 years old developer studying >> on Jagiellonian University, Poland who loves working on embedded. >> I'm official FreeBSD committer, working mainly on FreeBSD ARM and >> MIPS ports. I'm author of two FreeBSD ports: for TI DaVinci SoC >> family (ARM9) and LPC EA32x0 SoC family (ARM9 too). > > Thanks for your interest in HelenOS. > >> I have minimal experience with SPARC architecture and only >> a little with FPGA and VHDL (at least, I can read VHDL code), >> but I think that this project will be ideal opportunity to learn >> something new in that areas - and of course in microkernel >> design. > > Probably a great opportunity to learn about LEON, but as this is mostly > a kernel project, I am not so sure about the microkernel design part > that you refer to. On the other hand, implementing a userspace driver > for some IO devices found on these systems would expose you to the > microkernel aspect of HelenOS too. > >> At this moment, I'm doing research and writing SOCIS proposal >> which will be ready in few days (so I wish I could get >> some feedback on this proposal before submission deadline). > > Great! > >> My current research focuses on: >> >> * Preparing development environment: >> There's only one free emulator for LEON - qemu-sparc, both >> "official" emulators - TSIM and GRSIM from Gaisler are on >> paid licenses. TSIM evaluation version works only for 2^32 >> clock cycles, making it virtually useless. There's also EGOS >> but I'm unsure about licensing. > > It would be good to be sure about the level of QEMU support for LEON. > The only other option seems to be going with that FPGA board.
QEMU lacks firmware for LEON, as it's not supported in OpenBIOS. And I couldn't find any firmware for LEON3 (open or closed) to test QEMU. I'm not sure how does TSIM work - does it have a firmware? If it does, it might be better for the kernel development despite the 2^32 cycles limitation. Otherwise, if the idea of LEON boards is that the kernel _is_ the firmware, development under QEMU might be more convenient than under TSIM. When emulating LEON, QEMU can load an arbitrary ELF file instead of firmware. >> * scope of the work. Am I right that support for Timer, UART >> and interrupt controller IP Cores is sufficent to run >> HelenOS? > > Well, to some minimal extent (so that you get some very basic > functionality out of the kernel) yes. There is also memory management, > trap handling (which on SPARC V9 was probably the most complex thing to > do). LEON is V8, so it's a bit easier. :) Artyom -- Regards, Artyom Tarasenko linux/sparc and solaris/sparc under qemu blog: http://tyom.blogspot.com/search/label/qemu _______________________________________________ HelenOS-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.modry.cz/listinfo/helenos-devel
