am335x-pm-firmware (and reducing Linux kernel size)

Andy Pont

Hello,

I am looking to improve the boot time of my device in part by reducing the size of the Linux kernel. Currently kernel load + decompression takes 2.96 seconds and ideally I need to take 0.5 to 0.75 seconds out of that. The kernel (v3.14) is currently 2351.02KB part of which is made up by the 216KB blob that is the am335x-pm-firmware.

Some possibly dumb questions...

What happens if I remove this firmware blob from the kernel? What features do I lose?

is there a way to have it located in the root file system and load it during the init process rather than as part of kernel startup?

Thanks,

Andy.

over 10 years ago

0 Biser Gatchev-XID over 10 years ago

TI__Guru**** 393215 points

Hi Andy,

I will forward this to the software team.

0 Yordan Kovachev over 10 years ago

TI__Guru**** 161600 points

Hi Andy,

Andy Pont said:
What happens if I remove this firmware blob from the kernel? What features do I lose?

The following wiki should answer your question:
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/AM335x_Linux_Power_Management_User_Guide

Andy Pont said:
is there a way to have it located in the root file system and load it during the init process rather than as part of kernel startup?

As it is said in the wiki it is optional whether to configure your kernel to search for the binary (am335x-pm-firmware.bin) in firmware folder & load it, or not. However if you decide to configure kernel not to load the binary form firmware folder, you may need to check the kernel sources for any timeouts & retries and remove them, in order to save boot up time.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Yordan

Processors

Processors forum

am335x-pm-firmware (and reducing Linux kernel size)