Re: [PATCH 0/3] Semi-Falcon Boot Support

On Fri, Aug 14, 2026 at 03:51:50PM +0530, Gokul Praveen wrote:

> Semi-Falcon Mode is a hybrid boot approach that bypasses
> the A72 SPL while retaining U-Boot in the boot flow. This mode provides faster
> boot times compared to normal boot while maintaining U-Boot's flexibility for
> kernel loading and system configuration..
> 
> Boot logs link :
> 
> https://gist.github.com/GokulPraveen2001/fef407a482e2dad30272006de557627c
> 
> Gokul Praveen (3):
>   configs: add semi-falcon mode fragment for k3 devices
>   arm: k3-binman: add tisemifalcon.bin for semi-falcon mode
>   doc: ti: document semi-falcon mode for J784S4 EVM

This is just doing what many other aarch64 platforms do, of skipping the
SPL phase in Cortex-A because something else has already done any
required initialization, unless I'm reading all of this wrong. So my
feedback is:
- It's not "semi-falcon", it's just "no SPL". Naming differences, if
  any, should be done with that in mind.
- You should make sure to structure this so any K3 platform *could* take
  advantage. I seem to recall part of the rationale for the current
  approach is that some variants might only have a little SRAM (512k?
  256k?) while others might have 1-2M and so easily fit U-Boot in SRAM
  prior to relocation. It sounds like this specific family has a large
  enough lower memory bound.

-- 
Tom

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