QEMU AArch64 emulator

This page describes how to build and run coreboot for QEMU/AArch64. You can use LinuxBoot via make menuconfig or an arbitrary FIT image as a payload for QEMU/AArch64.

Running coreboot in QEMU

qemu-system-aarch64 -bios ./build/coreboot.rom \
    -M virt,secure=on,virtualization=on -cpu cortex-a53 \
    -nographic -m 8192M

  • The default CPU in QEMU for AArch64 is a cortex-a15 which is 32-bit ARM CPU. You need to specify 64-bit ARM CPU via -cpu cortex-a53.

  • The default privilege level in QEMU for AArch64 is EL1 that we can’t have the right to access EL3/EL2 registers. You need to enable EL3/EL2 via -machine secure=on,virtualization=on.

  • You need to specify the size of memory more than 544 MiB because 512 MiB is reserved for the kernel.

  • The maximum size of memory is 255GiB (-m 261120).

Building coreboot with an arbitrary FIT payload

There are 3 steps to make coreboot.rom for QEMU/AArch64. If you select LinuxBoot, step 2 and 3 have done by LinuxBoot.

  1. Get a DTB (Device Tree Blob)

  2. Build a FIT image with a DTB

  3. Add a FIT image to coreboot.rom

1. Get a DTB

You can get the DTB from QEMU with the following command.

$ qemu-system-aarch64 \
    -M virt,dumpdtb=virt.dtb,secure=on,virtualization=on \
    -cpu cortex-a53 -nographic -m 8192M

2. Build a FIT image with a DTB

You need to write an image source file that has an .its extension to configure kernels, ramdisks, and DTBs. See Flattened uImage Tree documentation for more details.

3. Add a FIT image to coreboot.rom

You can use cbfstool to add the payload you created in step 2 to the coreboot.rom.

$ ./build/cbfstool ./build/coreboot.rom add -f <path-to-a-payload>/uImage \
    -n fallback/payload -t fit -c lzma