Re: [Qemu-devel] Re: [PATCH 1/4] Add GPL bios as a submodule

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 09:37:26PM +0300, Stanislav wrote:
> > What does Coreboot give us over seabios?
> You asking :)

Coreboot and SeaBIOS don't compete - they complement each other.

Modern X86 systems have no memory access when they first power on -
the initial bootstrap code must scan the memory modules via the smbus
and then program the memory controller.  Much of Coreboot is dedicated
to programming ram and other low-level details of the hardware.

SeaBIOS is a port of bochs bios to gcc.  It provides support for
legacy 16bit interfaces, including loading an OS from
floppy/harddrive.  Coreboot uses SeaBIOS to provide support for off
the shelf OSes (eg, Windows).

Much of what coreboot provides is unnecessary for an emulated machine.

> > Doesn't Coreboot use seabios for legacy OS?
> 
> No idea ...

Yes - coreboot itself has no legacy interfaces - SeaBIOS provides that
support.

-Kevin