Arm Server Base System Architecture Reference board (sbsa-ref
)¶
While the virt
board is a generic board platform that doesn’t match
any real hardware the sbsa-ref
board intends to look like real
hardware. The Server Base System Architecture defines a
minimum base line of hardware support and importantly how the firmware
reports that to any operating system.
It is intended to be a machine for developing firmware and testing standards compliance with operating systems.
Supported devices¶
The sbsa-ref
board supports:
- A configurable number of AArch64 CPUs
- GIC version 3
- System bus AHCI controller
- System bus EHCI controller
- CDROM and hard disc on AHCI bus
- E1000E ethernet card on PCIe bus
- Bochs display adapter on PCIe bus
- A generic SBSA watchdog device
Board to firmware interface¶
sbsa-ref
is a static system that reports a very minimal devicetree to the
firmware for non-discoverable information about system components. This
includes both internal hardware and parts affected by the qemu command line
(i.e. CPUs and memory). As a result it must have a firmware specifically built
to expect a certain hardware layout (as you would in a real machine).
DeviceTree information¶
The devicetree provided by the board model to the firmware is not intended to be a complete compliant DT. It currently reports:
- CPUs
- memory
- platform version
- GIC addresses
The platform version is only for informing platform firmware about
what kind of sbsa-ref
board it is running on. It is neither
a QEMU versioned machine type nor a reflection of the level of the
SBSA/SystemReady SR support provided.
The machine-version-major
value is updated when changes breaking
fw compatibility are introduced. The machine-version-minor
value
is updated when features are added that don’t break fw compatibility.