On The Metal Ron Minnich
Dec 16, 2019
Ron Minnich, the 'Godfather of Open Firmware,' discusses the complexities of DRAM training, the concept of quantum computing, testing system limits, the rise and fall of Miradat, the complexity of Broadcom SDK, stateless laptops, boot-not-brick in Open System firmware, UEFI in Linux and ARM systems, and the closing thoughts and credits.
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LinuxBIOS origin
- Ron Minnich's frustration with VA Linux cluster's 5-minute boot time and complex firmware flashing inspired LinuxBIOS.
- The initial goal was a simple copy-to-RAM and jump, but DRAM training's growing complexity made it more complex.
DRAM Training Complexity
- DRAM training code, initially simple, became complex with DDR due to training requirements, reaching millions of instructions.
- Modern BIOS systems cache training parameters to avoid repeating the slow, billion-instruction process.
Open Source Firmware Conference
- Open source firmware conferences, like the one attended by Ron Minnich, Brian Cantrell, and Jess Frazell, foster knowledge sharing.
- They resemble old-school conferences, emphasizing learning and collaboration, unlike modern commercialized events.