MIPS Malta
The MIPS Malta is an ATX formfactor evaluation board made by MIPS Technologies. It supports a large variety of processor options; common processor types are 4Kc, 4KEc, 5Kc or a 24Kc core.
Hardware
The Malta board has four 32-bit PCI slots that are usually clocked at 33MHz and onboard Am79c970 PC-Net PCI Ethernet. It has Intel 82371AB PIIX4 (aka Southbridge) onboard which provides two PCI IDE (one for CompactFLASH socket), USB 1.1, and conventional PC-compatible peripherials : two i8259 IAC, i8254 timer, mc146818 RTC and CMOS e.t.c. The Malta has also a SuperIO chip behind a PIIX4 PCI/ISA bridge wich provides 16550 compatible DUART, LPT, floppy controller and PS/2 keyboard and mouse.
Malta board also contains Crystal Semiconductors CS4281 AC'97 PCI sound and AMR riser.
The Malta can operate in big endian or little endian mode. This is accomplished by a BIGEND switch on the board.
The 4Mbyte FLASH at the 0xbe000000 contains YAMON, YAMON's environment and has a free space for user applications.
Core cards
Malta board may be equipped with various "core cards". A core card includes a CPU, a system controller (aka Northbridge) and SDRAM module.
| CoreCard | CORID | CPUs | Controller |
|---|---|---|---|
| QED5261 | 0 | QED RM5261 | GT64120 |
| CoreLV | 1 | MIPS32 4K, MIPS64 5K | GT64120 |
| CoreBonito64 | 2 | QED RM5261, RM7061A | Bonito64 |
| Core20K | 3 | MIPS64 20Kc, MIPS64 25Kf | Bonito64 |
| CoreFPGA | 4 | MIPS32 4K, MIPS64 5K | GT64120 |
| CoreMSC | 5 | . | . |
| CoreEMUL | 6 | . | . |
| CoreFPGA2 | 7 | . | MIPS SOC-it 101 |
| CoreFPGAR2 | 8 | . | GT64120 |
| CoreFPGA3 | 9 | . | MIPS SOC-it 101 |
Firmware
Malta uses YAMON for it's firmware. YAMON determines various Core cards model and endianity automatically. The YAMON image contains two, Big- and Little- endian parts and "magic" code to determine current endianity.
There is RedBoot port to Malta too.
Linux support
The Malta is fully supported by Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.6. Since generally the main GIT tree on linux-mips.org is more geared towards development a separate Malta Linux Repository that's geared towards absolute stability on Malta is being maintained by MIPS Technologies Inc.
OVPsim supports the Mips Malta Platform booting Linux
Emulation
Malta board is a most popular platform for MIPS full-system emulation.
GXemul supports MIPS Malta CoreLV (CORID=1) well enough to run unmodified Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels (except PCI and LAN stuff).
QEMU also support MIPS Malta architecture.
- OVPWorld Mips homepage OVPsim simulates Mips Malta
- Virtio VPMM Virtual Platform emulates MIPS Malta, VPMM Virtual Platform article @embeddedstar
- Virtutech Simics Developer also emulates Malta
External links
- Malta Development Board Malta Development Board
- NetBSD evbmips port
- Debian precompiled kernels and HOWTO.
- LynuxWorks BSPs for MIPS Malta
