skiboot
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Firmware for OpenPower systems

https://github.com/open-power/skiboot

OPAL firmware (OpenPower Abstraction Layer) comes in several parts.

A simplified flow of what happens when the power button is pressed is:

 1) The baseboard management controller (BMC) powers the system on.
 2) The BMC selects the master chip and releases the self-boot engines (SBEs)
    on the POWER8 chips, master last.
 3) The BMC relinquishes control of the flexible service interface (FSI)
    SCAN/SCOM engines.
 4) The hostboot firmware IPLs the system. It initiates a secondary power-on
    sequence through a digital power systems sweep (DPSS).
 5) The hostboot firmware loads the OPAL image and moves all processors to
    their execution starting points.

Here, the OPAL image is three parts:
 1) skiboot (includes OPAL runtime services)
 2) skiroot - the bootloader environment
    a) kernel
    b) initramfs (containing petitboot bootloader)

They may be all part of one payload or three separate images (depending on
platform).

The bootloader will kexec a host kernel (probably linux). The host OS can
make OPAL calls. A TODO item is to extensively document this API.

See doc/overview.txt for a more in depth overview of skiboot.


Hacking
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You will need a C compiler (gcc 4.8) for ppc64 (big endian).
You will need a POWER8 system that you can deploy new firmware to.

License
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See LICENSE