MinnowBoard Max

Overview

The MinnowBoard board configuration supports the following:

  • HPET
  • Advanced Programmed Interrupt Controller (APIC)
  • NS16550 UART

Hardware

Supported Features

This board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface Controller Driver/Component
HPET on-chip system clock
APIC on-chip interrupt controller
NS16550 UART on-chip serial port

The kernel currently does not support other hardware features on this platform.

HPET System Clock Support

This board uses a system clock frequency of 25 MHz.

Note

The LOAPIC timer may be used instead of the HPET. To do so, set SYS_CLOCK_HW_CYCLES_PER_SEC to a custom value that is tied to the host system speed.

Serial Port

This board uses a single serial communication channel with a NS16550 serial driver that operates in polling mode. For an interrupt-driven driver, enable the CONFIG_UART_INTERRUPT_DRIVEN kernel configuration option.

PCI

PCI drivers assume that IO regions and IRQs for devices are preconfigured identically by the firmware on all supported devices. This configuration is specified in the Kconfig file for the Intel Atom SoC. The PCI library supports dynamically enumerating PCI devices, but that support is disabled by default.

Note

The PCI library does not support 64-bit devices. Memory address and size storage only require 32-bit integers.

Known Problems or Limitations

The following platform features are unsupported:

  • Isolated Memory Regions
  • Serial port in Direct Memory Access (DMA) mode
  • Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) flash
  • General-Purpose Input/Output (GPIO)
  • Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C)
  • Ethernet
  • Supervisor Mode Execution Protection (SMEP)

Creating a GRUB2 Boot Loader Image from a Linux Host

Follow the same steps documented for the Galileo board.

Booting Zephyr on the MinnowBoard

The MinnowBoard by default will be running a 64bit firmware. To boot Zephyr, you will need to replace the 64bit firmware with the 32bit variant. Please follow the instructions for flashing and updating the firmware documented at the MinnowBoard firmware website.