On some single board computers, SPI flash contains petitboot or u-boot.
According to schematics, Rock Pi S also has SPI flash. Does SPI flash on Rock Pi S also contain u-boot? If it doesn’t, what is SPI flash for?
Does SPI flash contain u-boot?
SPI flash is (usually) just big enough storage (storage like any other) to cover all boot stages and can load kernel directly. If you are lucky that u-boot have drivers for network, PCI and other peripherals … you can also boot from there.
However most of the single board computers comes without SPI but most of them do supports it. In some cases you can also add a flash on your own - to the PCB or via header.
https://github.com/radxa/rockchip-bsp seems unaware of SPI flash. https://wiki.radxa.com/RockpiS/hardware doesn’t mention SPI flash at all while https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpi4/hardware does.
Does Rock Pi S actually have SPI flash for u-boot?
No. ROCK Pi S doesn’t have spi flash on board. Some model has SD NAND flash on board.
1 Like