Re: [PATCH 3/9] x86/moorestown: add moorestown platform flags

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Fri Jun 26 2009 - 11:01:15 EST



* Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> And? There's an obvious quality difference between various
> platform enumeration methods - and we strive for the highest
> quality methods.
>
> Using boot flags is one of the lowest quality enumeration methods
> and the fact that there's precedence for it in other architectures
> is not a technical reason to make the same mistakes on x86 too.
>
> Especially here where there's two other enumeration methods easily
> available: SFI and PCI. Any of those suffices.

btw., the "I am MRST" bootstrap info is certainly doable via a
bootloader flag as well, if this platform is _so_ deprived of basic
PC features that it has no other channel of information. Especially
if it has no BIOS and if the bootloader provides the memory map as
well - which seems to be the case here.

I can understand the PCI ID space being potentially awkward (if many
models with mismatching PCI IDs are planned) - so it's certainly
possible that the only thing that remains in the end is the
bootloader provided flag - no matter how sucky that may be.

So i am not trying to make a bigger deal out of this than it really
deserves and this is not a showstopper in my eyes - but this is
really an exceptional case and shouldnt be the glory model for how
ultra embedded should be done on x86 ...

Ingo
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