On 13 March 2015 at 08:52, Fathi Boudra <fathi.boudra@linaro.org> wrote:

Hi,

There's a change pending to enable PSCI on HiKey:
https://github.com/96boards/linux/pull/15

A regression is introduced when using HiSilicon bootloader:
we'll have one core when using Hisilicon's bootloader.

Here's the summary:
* current dtb + hisilicon bootloader: boot images, all cores enabled
* current dtb + uefi: boot images, one core enabled
* psci enabled dtb + hisilicon bootloader: boot images, one core enabled
* psci enabled dtb + uefi: boot images, all cores enabled

It won't be much of an issue since the long term plan is to deprecate HiSilicon
bootloader in favor of UEFI. Unfortunately, UEFI isn't feature complete (SD
card support missing, flash to eMMC limited to 128M, etc...).

In the meantime, moving forward it's proposed to provide a legacy dtb

A dt*b*, not a dt*s*, right?

and use
the PSCI enabled combination (UEFI + kernel) as the default as it is the
long term plan. It mitigates the issue for people using HiSilicon bootloader
while it enables people using UEFI.

Another option is to keep the status quo until UEFI is there
(speculation is "in 2 weeks")
and switch the default dtb at that time.

The question is which default dtb should be used? Opinions?

I would apply the psci patch and encourage people to upgrade their binary only vendor bootloader to the uefi one. If someone wants to stay with the huawei bootloader, they'll get one core or they can fix it themselves. The hikey isn't for sale yet, so I'd grab onto every chance to get people to use the release sw.

If that's too harsh I can see the value in providing a download for the non-psci dtb.

regards,

Koen