KR100199020B1 - A boot emulation method for spax - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for performing a boot emulation in a test bed composed of a personal computer to the function of the firmware to be mounted on the EPROM of the MPE board of a high-speed parallel computer. A boot emulation method for emulation in bed, comprising: writing a boot emulator code on a boot floppy disk so that the boot emulator code can be loaded and operated in a memory at the same time the system is started, and the boot emulator 20 described above The second step of additionally loading the tape device driver 25 from the boot floppy disk during the initialization process, and creates and manages the function call table and the device driver table, and receives a function call or boot processing request from the firmware, the boot processor ( 21) the firmware function call handler (23) Organized by the tape device driver 25 and then to to perform a BIOS call in the real mode, protected mode, returns to the function return value and characterized by consisting of a third step to return to the function call location.

Description

Boot Emulation Method for High-Speed Parallel Computers

The present invention relates to a boot emulation method for a high-speed parallel computer, and more particularly, a method for performing boot emulation on a test bed composed of a personal computer with a function of firmware to be mounted on an EPROM of a MPE board of a high-speed parallel computer. It's about.

In general, a high-speed parallel computer is composed of a plurality of nodes similar to the motherboard of a personal computer, and is a clustering system in which eight nodes form a cluster, and these clusters consist of up to 16. At this time, each node has a structure connected to each other by XNIF (Crossbar Network Interface) on the MPE board, it is to perform communication between nodes by message transmission. In addition, each node has a common MPE board, used by up to four Pentium Prochips processors, up to 1 gigabyte of local shared memory, two serial ports, one megabyte of nonvolatile memory, It has a structure that uses most of the hardware resources of the motherboard of a personal computer such as a time-of-day clock (TOCD).

On the other hand, the Basic Input Output System (BIOS) call used by personal computers has the advantage of providing an interface for manufacturers to use different types of expansion boards when used with DOS (Disk Operating System). The overhead caused by software interrupt processing has the disadvantage of greatly reducing the performance of the system. However, if the hardware is directly controlled in the firmware protected mode, such as firmware of a high-speed parallel computer, performance is greatly improved. In other words, when booting the operating system from the hard disk, the disk read request is made by a firmware call during the booting process, thereby reducing the overhead caused by the firmware call, requiring booting of an operating system for a high-speed parallel computer that is 6 megabytes or more. You can save time.

As mentioned above, although the MPE board of the high-speed parallel computer utilizes a lot of resources of the motherboard of the personal computer, there are many differences from the personal computer in the method of managing and using the resources. Whereas a personal computer runs as a BIOS and an operating system using it, a high-speed parallel computer boots the operating system from the hard disk by firmware operating in protected mode and must interface with the user with a normal terminal connected to the serial port.

That is, the hardware initialization and device drivers provided by the BIOS of the devices added to the motherboard and system slots of most personal computers run in real mode and boot the operating system from the DOS file system or add them to the hard disk. Unlike the process of mode conversion during the two-stage booting process to boot the UNIX operating system from the UNIX file system that is used, the high-speed parallel computer, which operates only in protected mode, the BIOS and the personal computer's basic BIOS and On high-speed parallel computers that cannot use the extended BIOS of an additional mounting board, the firmware must provide all device drivers.

However, the development of the firmware takes a lot of time, it is not only possible to test the complete MPE board, but also to develop a device driver for a variety of additional devices is a very difficult problem.

After all, the present invention has been given to solve the above problems, the main object of the present invention is to install a boot emulator between the firmware and the BIOS to emulate the hardware-dependent part while using a personal computer as a test bed of the high-speed parallel computer By providing the user environment, it is possible to test the functions to be included in the firmware in the process of developing the firmware of the high speed parallel computer, as well as reduce the programming process of the EPROM, and the booting process and the operating system developed for the high speed parallel computer. It provides a boot emulation method for high-speed parallel computers that can be checked and modified in the testbed to enable testing before the hardware is completed.

Another object of the present invention is to reflect the differences in hardware resources and operation of the testbed and high-speed parallel computer early check and fix the complex booting procedure, the firmware and booting process to pass the contents to the operating system to check the test bed In addition, the present invention provides a boot emulation method for a high-speed parallel computer that can provide a tool for accessing hardware resources and early development of a hardware certification test.

1 is a hierarchical structure diagram of a boot emulator according to the present invention.

2 is a flowchart of an initialization portion of a boot emulator according to the present invention.

3 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure in which a boot emulator accesses hardware when a firmware function is called in the present invention.

* Explanation of symbols for main parts of the drawings

10: firmware monitor 20: boot emulator

21: boot handler 22: initialization

23: firmware function pager 24: driver loader

25 Tape Drive 30 BIOS

40: hardware

A boot emulation method for a high speed parallel computer according to the present invention, which achieves the above object, in a boot emulation method for emulating a boot function and a firmware function of a high speed parallel computer in a test bed composed of a personal computer, A first step of recording the boot emulator code so that the boot emulator code can be loaded and moved at the same time as the system is started, and additionally a tape device driver is loaded from the boot floppy disk during the initialization of the boot emulator, and the function A second step of creating and managing a call table and a device driver table; receiving a function call or boot processing request from the firmware, causing the boot handler to perform a BIOS device call in the tape device driver and the real mode by the firmware function call processor; Protection mode After returning to clean up the function return value is characterized in that configured in a third step to return to the sewer call location.

In the present invention, the boot emulation code is written to a boot floppy disk to be loaded into a memory by a floppy boot method, so that it can be easily used in a personal computer. As the amount of firmware on a high-speed parallel computer grows, loading emulation code at a time increases the time it takes to load the emulation code according to the speed of the floppy disk. There will be no. Therefore, in the present invention, the boot emulation code can be selectively performed by separating the memory to be loaded by applying a three-step boot method consisting of an initialization function, a firmware function call function, a tape driver, and a firmware monitor.

Hereinafter, a boot emulation method for a high speed parallel computer according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described in more detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a hierarchical structure diagram of a boot emulator according to the present invention. The boot floppy of the boot emulator 20 on the BIOS 30 controlling the hardware 40 and the hardware 40 included in the motherboard of the personal computer is controlled. After loading from the disk, the firmware for the high-speed parallel computer is mounted in a software manner to test the firmware monitor 10 and the operating system booting function.

As shown in FIG. 1, the boot emulator 20 has six functions: a boot processor 21, an initialization 22, a firmware function call processor 23, a driver loader 24, and a tape driver 25. As shown in FIG. Can be configured according to the separation. Among them, the boot processor 21 converts the boot device number that can be recognized by the high-speed parallel computer for the boot request of the firmware into the device number of the test bed determined in the device driver table, and then converts the disk into the firmware function call processor 23. This is where I perform read requests from tape.

2 is a flowchart of an initialization portion of a boot emulator according to the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 2, the boot emulator 20 enters the protected mode (S11), and then transfers the control right from the ROM BIOS 30 of the personal computer after being loaded into the memory to call the firmware function. (S12).

Thereafter, it is determined whether the tape driver 25 is necessary (S13), and when the use of the tape device is required, such as system installation, the tape device driver 25 is used from the rest of the boot floppy disk using the driver loader 24. Read in the memory (S14), and prepare the device driver table to be used for the boot device request (S15). The function call table and device driver table created in this process are reserved by the BIOS, but they can be used when calling the firmware function by writing from 0x200, which is an unused area.

3 is a flowchart illustrating a procedure in which the boot emulator 20 accesses the hardware 40 through the BIOS 30 and the tape device driver 25 when a firmware function is called in the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 3, upon receiving a function call by the firmware or the boot processor 21, the firmware function call processor 23 executes a BIOS call (CALL) according to the request target to process the request of the calling function. It is determined whether it is necessary or whether the tape device driver 25 or the hardware 40 resource should be directly accessed (S21).

After that, when the function call is to be serviced by the BIOS call, the BIOS 30 operates in the real mode, so the system enters the real mode (S22) and the service provided by the BIOS 30 by the BIOS call. The control is performed using the hardware 40 (S23), and returns to the protected mode in order to return to the firmware operating only in the protected mode (S24). On the other hand, when the tape device driver 25 is needed, the driver is called (S25).

According to the above process, after the service for hardware control is completed, the function return value for the result of the requested service is summarized before returning to the firmware that called the function (S26). Reflect the service to complete the service.

On the other hand, the boot device of a personal computer does not have a floppy disk and a hard disk, but a high speed parallel computer does not have a floppy disk drive, but instead uses 4 millimeters of digital audio tape (DAT) for system installation. The personal computer's BIOS does not have device drivers and interfaces to tape devices, so system installation using tape is not possible. Accordingly, the present invention can solve the problem by emulating a tape device using a host system and a serial port, or by including a tape device driver in a SCSI device driver. The emulation method is not reasonable because the tape device driver uses a serial port and the access time is too long, but it can be used to verify system installation prior to the development of the SCSI device driver.

The present invention described above is configured to boot and operate by emulation code in a boot floppy disk, it is possible to omit the complicated process of EPROM programming due to a function change and addition in the process of firmware development.

In addition, as in the present invention, by configuring a test bed using a personal computer and using a boot emulator, the firmware and boot function for the high speed parallel computer can be tested early and the interface with the operating system can be determined. It can not only drastically shorten the development of firmware and operating system, but also provide an environment for testing a stable operating system.

Claims (1)

In the boot emulation method to emulate the boot and firmware functions of a high-speed parallel computer in a test bed composed of personal computers, the boot emulator code is loaded into the memory at the same time the system is started by writing the boot emulator code to a boot floppy disk. A second step of loading a tape device driver from the boot floppy disk during the initialization of the boot emulator, and creating and managing a function call table and a device driver table; and calling a function from firmware. In response to the boot processing request, the boot handler causes the firmware function call handler to make BIOS calls in the tape device driver and in real mode, and after returning to protected mode, cleans up the function return value and returns to the function call location. Nine steps The high-speed parallel boot emulation method for a computer, characterized in that.