From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <4ACB8960.60604@conducive.org> Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2009 02:16:00 +0800 From: W B Hacker User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.23) Gecko/20090823 SeaMonkey/1.1.18 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> References: <908aebe446ac7ac2d613feac1d220f9b@plan9.bell-labs.com> <13426df10910061021g3b033abbia134769baee934d3@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <13426df10910061021g3b033abbia134769baee934d3@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [9fans] /sys/include/ip.h 5c(1) Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8168165e-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 ron minnich wrote: > On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 9:55 AM, wrote: >> The cortex-a8 arms are arm v7-a architecture. L2 page table >> entries have changed format. The a8 includes trustzone, so >> many registers have forked, producing a "secure" and a "nonsecure" >> version of the register. The arm v7-a manual is a 2,150-page pdf >> file and the omap35x SoC manual is a 3,500-page pdf file; both >> documents refer you to other documents for some details. Some >> co-processor control registers that used to exist to clear caches >> and TLBs have vanished. I'm sure there's more that I've blocked. >> >> > > as bad as the ARM may be, it can't hold a candle to what the pentium has become: > 1. RISC CPU (undocumented) in the northbridge (MCH) running ThreadX > 2. RISC CPU in the Ethernet part running ThreadX > 3. Simple CPU in the southbridge (ICH) running, well, who knows. But > the entire system won't come up without that CPU coming up, and the > code for that CPU is (of course!) never going to be available in any > general sense. > > (1) and (2) hold conversations with each other. Doing what? You're not > supposed to know. > > All of this stuff is without any useful docs -- intentionally. You > can't write code for (1) and (2) because the code in the FLASH has to > be signed with Intel's private key, public version of which is *burned > into the chip in read-only registers*. > > How much do you feel like trusting this platform? > > Daniel Liu of RIT studied (1) and (2) this summer, we're going to drop > a paper into some publication this fall we hope. > > PCs used to be open. They are now quite closed. I am holding out hope > for the ARM as the next open thing. I realize the OMAP 35 manual is > long, but at least there is a manual you can get! > > ron > Anyone know if the AMD environment is any more 'open'? Worse? What about VIA (C6 and 'Nano') and their supporing ~bridge chipset(s)? ISTR OpenBSD has just upped the specific support for VIA 'glue' chipset, and they don't usually go where decent information cannot be freely had. I hadn't paid much attention to the ARM until the recent '2 GHz' blurb, but that's a game-changer. Bill