Aspeed family boards (`*-bmc`, `ast2500-evb`, `ast2600-evb`, `ast2700-evb`)

The QEMU Aspeed machines model BMCs of various OpenPOWER systems and Aspeed evaluation boards. They are based on different releases of the Aspeed SoC : the AST2400 integrating an ARM926EJ-S CPU (400MHz), the AST2500 with an ARM1176JZS CPU (800MHz), the AST2600 with dual cores ARM Cortex-A7 CPUs (1.2GHz) and more recently the AST2700 with quad cores ARM Cortex-A35 64 bits CPUs (1.6GHz)

The SoC comes with RAM, Gigabit ethernet, USB, SD/MMC, USB, SPI, I2C, etc.

AST2400 SoC based machines :

palmetto-bmc OpenPOWER Palmetto POWER8 BMC
quanta-q71l-bmc OpenBMC Quanta BMC
supermicrox11-bmc Supermicro X11 BMC

AST2500 SoC based machines :

ast2500-evb Aspeed AST2500 Evaluation board
romulus-bmc OpenPOWER Romulus POWER9 BMC
witherspoon-bmc OpenPOWER Witherspoon POWER9 BMC
sonorapass-bmc OCP SonoraPass BMC
fp5280g2-bmc Inspur FP5280G2 BMC
g220a-bmc Bytedance G220A BMC
yosemitev2-bmc Facebook YosemiteV2 BMC
tiogapass-bmc Facebook Tiogapass BMC

AST2600 SoC based machines :

ast2600-evb Aspeed AST2600 Evaluation board (Cortex-A7)
tacoma-bmc OpenPOWER Witherspoon POWER9 AST2600 BMC
rainier-bmc IBM Rainier POWER10 BMC
fuji-bmc Facebook Fuji BMC
bletchley-bmc Facebook Bletchley BMC
fby35-bmc Facebook fby35 BMC
qcom-dc-scm-v1-bmc Qualcomm DC-SCM V1 BMC
qcom-firework-bmc Qualcomm Firework BMC

AST2700 SoC based machines :

ast2700-evb Aspeed AST2700 Evaluation board (Cortex-A35)

Supported devices

SMP (for the AST2600 Cortex-A7)

Interrupt Controller (VIC)

Timer Controller

RTC Controller

I2C Controller, including the new register interface of the AST2600

System Control Unit (SCU)

SRAM mapping

X-DMA Controller (basic interface)

Static Memory Controller (SMC or FMC) - Only SPI Flash support

SPI Memory Controller

USB 2.0 Controller

SD/MMC storage controllers

SDRAM controller (dummy interface for basic settings and training)

Watchdog Controller

GPIO Controller (Master only)

UART

Ethernet controllers

Front LEDs (PCA9552 on I2C bus)

LPC Peripheral Controller (a subset of subdevices are supported)

Hash/Crypto Engine (HACE) - Hash support only. TODO: HMAC and RSA

ADC

Secure Boot Controller (AST2600)

eMMC Boot Controller (dummy)

PECI Controller (minimal)

I3C Controller

Internal Bridge Controller (SLI dummy)

Missing devices

Coprocessor support

PWM and Fan Controller

Slave GPIO Controller

Super I/O Controller

PCI-Express 1 Controller

Graphic Display Controller

MCTP Controller

Mailbox Controller

Virtual UART

eSPI Controller

Boot options

The Aspeed machines can be started using the -kernel and -dtb options to load a Linux kernel or from a firmware. Images can be downloaded from the OpenBMC jenkins :

https://jenkins.openbmc.org/job/ci-openbmc/lastSuccessfulBuild/

or directly from the OpenBMC GitHub release repository :

https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/releases

or directly from the ASPEED Forked OpenBMC GitHub release repository :

https://github.com/AspeedTech-BMC/openbmc/releases

To boot a kernel directly from a Linux build tree:

$ qemu-system-arm -M ast2600-evb -nographic \
      -kernel arch/arm/boot/zImage \
      -dtb arch/arm/boot/dts/aspeed-ast2600-evb.dtb \
      -initrd rootfs.cpio

To boot the machine from the flash image, use an MTD drive :

$ qemu-system-arm -M romulus-bmc -nic user \
      -drive file=obmc-phosphor-image-romulus.static.mtd,format=raw,if=mtd -nographic

Options specific to Aspeed machines are :

execute-in-place which emulates the boot from the CE0 flash device by using the FMC controller to load the instructions, and not simply from RAM. This takes a little longer.

fmc-model to change the default FMC Flash model. FW needs support for the chip model to boot.

spi-model to change the default SPI Flash model.

bmc-console to change the default console device. Most of the machines use the UART5 device for a boot console, which is mapped on /dev/ttyS4 under Linux, but it is not always the case.

To use other flash models, for instance a different FMC chip and a bigger (64M) SPI for the ast2500-evb machine, run :

-M ast2500-evb,fmc-model=mx25l25635e,spi-model=mx66u51235f

When more flexibility is needed to define the flash devices, to use different flash models or define all flash devices (up to 8), the -nodefaults QEMU option can be used to avoid creating the default flash devices.

Flash devices should then be created from the command line and attached to a block device :

$ qemu-system-arm -M ast2600-evb \
      -blockdev node-name=fmc0,driver=file,filename=/path/to/fmc0.img \
      -device mx66u51235f,bus=ssi.0,cs=0x0,drive=fmc0 \
      -blockdev node-name=fmc1,driver=file,filename=/path/to/fmc1.img \
      -device mx66u51235f,bus=ssi.0,cs=0x1,drive=fmc1 \
      -blockdev node-name=spi1,driver=file,filename=/path/to/spi1.img \
      -device mx66u51235f,cs=0x0,bus=ssi.1,drive=spi1 \
      -nographic -nodefaults

In that case, the machine boots fetching instructions from the FMC0 device. It is slower to start but closer to what HW does. Using the machine option execute-in-place has a similar effect.

To change the boot console and use device UART3 (/dev/ttyS2 under Linux), use :

-M ast2500-evb,bmc-console=uart3

Boot the AST2700 machine from the flash image, use an MTD drive :

IMGDIR=ast2700-default
UBOOT_SIZE=$(stat --format=%s -L ${IMGDIR}/u-boot-nodtb.bin)

$ qemu-system-aarch64 -M ast2700-evb \
     -device loader,force-raw=on,addr=0x400000000,file=${IMGDIR}/u-boot-nodtb.bin \
     -device loader,force-raw=on,addr=$((0x400000000 + ${UBOOT_SIZE})),file=${IMGDIR}/u-boot.dtb \
     -device loader,force-raw=on,addr=0x430000000,file=${IMGDIR}/bl31.bin \
     -device loader,force-raw=on,addr=0x430080000,file=${IMGDIR}/optee/tee-raw.bin \
     -device loader,cpu-num=0,addr=0x430000000 \
     -device loader,cpu-num=1,addr=0x430000000 \
     -device loader,cpu-num=2,addr=0x430000000 \
     -device loader,cpu-num=3,addr=0x430000000 \
     -smp 4 \
     -drive file=${IMGDIR}/image-bmc,format=raw,if=mtd \
     -nographic

Aspeed minibmc family boards (`ast1030-evb`)

The QEMU Aspeed machines model mini BMCs of various Aspeed evaluation boards. They are based on different releases of the Aspeed SoC : the AST1030 integrating an ARM Cortex M4F CPU (200MHz).

The SoC comes with SRAM, SPI, I2C, etc.

AST1030 SoC based machines :

ast1030-evb Aspeed AST1030 Evaluation board (Cortex-M4F)

Supported devices

SMP (for the AST1030 Cortex-M4F)

Interrupt Controller (VIC)

Timer Controller

I2C Controller

System Control Unit (SCU)

SRAM mapping

Static Memory Controller (SMC or FMC) - Only SPI Flash support

SPI Memory Controller

USB 2.0 Controller

Watchdog Controller

GPIO Controller (Master only)

UART

LPC Peripheral Controller (a subset of subdevices are supported)

Hash/Crypto Engine (HACE) - Hash support only. TODO: HMAC and RSA

ADC

Secure Boot Controller

PECI Controller (minimal)

Missing devices

PWM and Fan Controller

Slave GPIO Controller

Mailbox Controller

Virtual UART

eSPI Controller

I3C Controller

Boot options

The Aspeed machines can be started using the -kernel to load a Zephyr OS or from a firmware. Images can be downloaded from the ASPEED GitHub release repository :

https://github.com/AspeedTech-BMC/zephyr/releases

To boot a kernel directly from a Zephyr build tree:

$ qemu-system-arm -M ast1030-evb -nographic \
      -kernel zephyr.elf

Facebook Yosemite v3.5 Platform and CraterLake Server (`fby35`)

Facebook has a series of multi-node compute server designs named Yosemite. The most recent version released was Yosemite v3.

Yosemite v3.5 is an iteration on this design, and is very similar: there’s a baseboard with a BMC, and 4 server slots. The new server board design termed “CraterLake” includes a Bridge IC (BIC), with room for expansion boards to include various compute accelerators (video, inferencing, etc). At the moment, only the first server slot’s BIC is included.

Yosemite v3.5 is itself a sled which fits into a 40U chassis, and 3 sleds can be fit into a chassis. See here for an example.

In this generation, the BMC is an AST2600 and each BIC is an AST1030. The BMC runs OpenBMC, and the BIC runs OpenBIC.

Firmware images can be retrieved from the Github releases or built from the source code, see the README’s for instructions on that. This image uses the “fby35” machine recipe from OpenBMC, and the “yv35-cl” target from OpenBIC. Some reference images can also be found here:

$ wget https://github.com/facebook/openbmc/releases/download/openbmc-e2294ff5d31d/fby35.mtd
$ wget https://github.com/peterdelevoryas/OpenBIC/releases/download/oby35-cl-2022.13.01/Y35BCL.elf

Since this machine has multiple SoC’s, each with their own serial console, the recommended way to run it is to allocate a pseudoterminal for each serial console and let the monitor use stdio. Also, starting in a paused state is useful because it allows you to attach to the pseudoterminals before the boot process starts.

$ qemu-system-arm -machine fby35 \
    -drive file=fby35.mtd,format=raw,if=mtd \
    -device loader,file=Y35BCL.elf,addr=0,cpu-num=2 \
    -serial pty -serial pty -serial mon:stdio \
    -display none -S
$ screen /dev/tty0 # In a separate TMUX pane, terminal window, etc.
$ screen /dev/tty1
$ (qemu) c             # Start the boot process once screen is setup.

Aspeed family boards (*-bmc, ast2500-evb, ast2600-evb, ast2700-evb)

Supported devices

Missing devices

Boot options

Aspeed minibmc family boards (ast1030-evb)

Supported devices

Missing devices

Boot options

Facebook Yosemite v3.5 Platform and CraterLake Server (fby35)

Aspeed family boards (`*-bmc`, `ast2500-evb`, `ast2600-evb`, `ast2700-evb`)

Aspeed minibmc family boards (`ast1030-evb`)

Facebook Yosemite v3.5 Platform and CraterLake Server (`fby35`)