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Discovering Memory Address Windows Without Device Trees

A project log for Kestrel Computer Project

The Kestrel project is all about freedom of computing and the freedom of learning using a completely open hardware and software design.

samuel-a-falvo-iiSamuel A. Falvo II 12/28/2016 at 22:271 Comment

A new long-form blog article has been posted on my official blog.

Abstract

Device trees are used to communicate existence of non-discoverable hardware, such as where scratchpad memory appears in the processor’s address space, to an operating system. Newer platforms, such as RISC-V, offer the opportunity to design systems in a way that obviates the need for complexities such as device trees; yet, these opportunities are often not exploited. The Kestrel-3 is designed to minimize its need for any kind of device tree-like concept through, in part, common sense rules concerning address decoding and sensible system software. This allows the system firmware and/or operating system to discover the hardware’s boot-up RAM address decode window with an algorithm substantially simpler than a typical device tree parser.

Discussions

Yann Guidon / YGDES wrote 12/29/2016 at 16:03 point

You got me interested here too...

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