Bootloader

The purpose of the bootloader is to load the Linux kernel into memory together with any other required data (e.g ramdisk image or device tree) and then execute the kernel with appropriate arguments.

Microchip uses the U-Boot bootloader which is an integrated part of Buildroot. Targets have been prepared for each of our reference boards:

  • arm_bootloaders - For use on 32 bit ARM based reference boards.

  • arm_bootloaders_bbb - For use on 32 bit ARM based Beagle Bone Black boards as external CPU.

  • arm64_bootloaders - For use on 64 bit ARM based reference boards.

  • arm64_bootloaders_ls1046 - For use on 64 bit ARM based LS1046 boards as external CPU.

  • arm64_bootloaders_rpi - For use on 64 bit ARM based Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 boards as external CPU.

  • mipsel_bootloaders - For use on all our 32 bit MIPS based reference boards.

These targets can be used as a reference if you need to adapt the bootloader to a different board.

A bootloader target can be built in the same way as the other targets as described in the Build section.

See the individual sections in Supported HW in order to see how to boot a specific board.