Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
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Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
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Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#2For completeness sake - uboot can also boot EFI binaries, though upstream won’t support GOP video on RK3588, and is also device tree only so no Windows, just Linux and BSDs.
Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#3This here is the important next step for ARM SBCs. A working UEFI. Maybe they can get together and standardize something they can work on together. But this whole SD card flashing nonsense needs to stop.
Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#4This here is the important next step for ARM SBCs. A working UEFI. Maybe they can get together and standardize something they can work on together. But this whole SD card flashing nonsense needs to stop.
There is a UEFI standard in some of Arms specs, but it’s only mandatory for the server class IP atm. Some soc vendors are starting to adopt it even in non-server class but it’s slow. My feedback to an Arm devrel a few years ago was exactly this though: you need to provide a consistent standard boot path that also helps OS authors with enough bootstrap that debugging is less of a crapshoot every single time. I hope some progress is made on pushing that down the stack.
When the topic comes up some people express a lot of hatred for uefi (mostly users rather than implementors) but where it’s implementors the ms style APIs and so on are largely the center of it IME, and that’s not really an easy fix when it’s already spec’d. Sometimes there are concerns about size, but slimmed down deployments are common in the socs that ship already - perhaps standardizing on what that slimmed down thing is might help too. May also assuage some of the other concerns of excessive runtime services (which seems rare, but I get the existential concern)
Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#5This here is the important next step for ARM SBCs. A working UEFI. Maybe they can get together and standardize something they can work on together. But this whole SD card flashing nonsense needs to stop.
There is a UEFI standard in some of Arms specs, but it’s only mandatory for the server class IP atm. Some soc vendors are starting to adopt it even in non-server class but it’s slow. My feedback to an Arm devrel a few years ago was exactly this though: you need to provide a consistent standard boot path that also helps OS authors with enough bootstrap that debugging is less of a crapshoot every single time. I hope so…
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Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#6This here is the important next step for ARM SBCs. A working UEFI. Maybe they can get together and standardize something they can work on together. But this whole SD card flashing nonsense needs to stop.
That is what the Arm SystemReady Compliance Program was supposed to achieve. Unfortunately not many manufacturers are following it yet
https://www.arm.com/architecture/system-architectures/system...
Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#7The Rock 5 ITX+ is a nice board. I wish a 1U back panel were available for it.
UEFI does make things a lot easier. It's a shame that this isn't more common for Arm boards, but it's good to see things heading in the right direction.
Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#8The Rock 5 ITX+ is a nice board. I wish a 1U back panel were available for it. UEFI does make things a lot easier. It's a shame that this isn't more common for Arm boards, but it's good to see things heading in the right direction.
Serious question: what things does it make easier? Other than booting windows. I don't know anything about it except that it seems much more complicated than u-boot.
Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#9The Rock 5 ITX+ is a nice board. I wish a 1U back panel were available for it. UEFI does make things a lot easier. It's a shame that this isn't more common for Arm boards, but it's good to see things heading in the right direction.
Serious question: what things does it make easier? Other than booting windows. I don't know anything about it except that it seems much more complicated than u-boot.
Having UEFI in some form means you can just boot your preferred Linux installer and install to disk, much as you would for an x86 device, rather that needing to get a specific disk image and dd it to an SD card.
Re: Installing UEFI Firmware on ARM SBCs
#10The Rock 5 ITX+ is a nice board. I wish a 1U back panel were available for it. UEFI does make things a lot easier. It's a shame that this isn't more common for Arm boards, but it's good to see things heading in the right direction.
That backside is looking rather full. Nothing which a few blocks of styrofoam from packaging residue, maybe some cardboard or other plastics, and adhesive metal tape, and/or some super/hot-glue couldn't easily fill.
Or something 3D-printed...
Or did you mean the height of the ports on the backside itself is too large for 1U already?