[Qemu-devel] Re: RFC: emulation of system flash

[Jordan Justen]

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 01:10, Avi Kivity <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 03/10/2011 06:51 AM, Jordan Justen wrote:
>>
>> http://wiki.qemu.org/Features/System_Flash
>>
>
> - make the programming interface the same as an existing device

How strongly do you feel about this?

For one thing, real devices are not as flexible as QEMU for flash
sizes.  QEMU allows for any 64kb multiple bios size.  Real world
devices generally only support powers of 2 sizes.

Firmware hub devices are somewhat simplistic to emulate, but I think
they use 16MB of address space, while only providing <= 1MB of flash
storage.

SPI devices are available in many sizes, so it might be possible to
choose a 16MB device to emulate.  But, it would be a lot more complex
to emulate as it would it involve emulating an SPI contoller + the
device.

I thought this might be a case where deviation from real hardware
emulation could better serve the VM's needs.

-Jordan