Adventures in OpenPower Firmware
Channel: Linux.conf.au 2016 -- Geelong, Australia
Date: 2016-02-06

Stewart Smith
https://linux.conf.au/schedule/30215/view_talk
In mid 2014, IBM released the first POWER8 based systems with the new Free and Open Source OPAL
firmware. Since then, several members of the OpenPower foundation have produced
(or are currently producing) machines based on the POWER8 processor with
the OPAL firmware.

This talk will cover the POWER8 chip with an open source firmware stack and how it all fits together.

We will walk through all of the firmware components and what they do,
including the boot sequence from power being applied up to booting an
operating system.

We'll delve into:
- the time before you have RAM
- the time before you have thermal management
- the time before you have PCI
- runtime processor diagnostics and repair
- the bootloader (and extending it)
- building and flashing your own firmware
- using a simulator instead
- the firmware interface that Linux talks to
  - device tree and OPAL calls
- fun in firmware QA and testing