Qualcomm Reference Design Platform (RDP)

Qualcomm RDPs are development boards based on the Qualcomm IPQ series of SoCs. These SoCs are used as the application processors in WiFi router platforms. RDPs come in multiple variants with differences in storage medium (NOR, NAND, MMC), no. of USB and PCIe ports, n/w ports etc.

Installation

First, setup CROSS_COMPILE for aarch64. Then, build U-Boot for IPQ9574:

$ export CROSS_COMPILE=<aarch64 toolchain prefix>
$ make qcom_ipq9574_mmc_defconfig
$ make -j8

This will build u-boot.elf in the configured output directory.

Although the RDPs do not have secure boot set up by default, the firmware still expects firmware ELF images to be “signed”. The signature does not provide any security in this case, but it provides the firmware with some required metadata.

To “sign” u-boot.elf you can use e.g. qtestsign:

$ qtestsign -v6 aboot -o u-boot.mbn u-boot.elf

Then install the resulting u-boot.mbn to the 0:APPSBL partition on your device with:

IPQ9574# tftpboot path/to/u-boot.mbn
IPQ9574# mmc part (note down the start & end block no.s of '0:APPSBL' partition)
IPQ9574# mmc erase <start blk no> <count>
IPQ9574# mmc write $fileaddr <blk no> <count>

U-Boot should be running after a reboot (reset).