Open-Source VPU-Side Bootloader For Raspberry π
The Raspberry π has been open-source from the beginning in every respect except one: the earliest stages of booting are actually managed by the “VPU” graphics chip, not by the ARM CPU. And the bootloader has been a proprietary firmware blob with no source code available. What made it worse was that the VPU has control over the CPU, not the other way round. Now it looks like that may be changing <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-Bootloader>.
The Raspberry π has been open-source from the beginning in every respect except one: the earliest stages of booting are actually managed by the “VPU” graphics chip, not by the ARM CPU. And the bootloader has been a proprietary firmware blob with no source code available. What made it worse was that the VPU has control over the CPU, not the other way round.
Now it looks like that may be changing <http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-Bootloader>.
Cool! Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
participants (2)
-
Lawrence D'Oliveiro -
Peter Reutemann