User's Manual

www.openmoko.com
23
Neo1973 emulation
This target will (obviously) run original OpenMoko rootfs images, but then
it should also be able to run the original u-boot and kernel images, the
same ones that a real Neo1973 uses. Among other differences you will
notice between this approach and the Integrator/CP target is you also get
correct screen resolution, some (fake) battery readings, and other
goodness. Currently missing parts of the emulator are: AGPS and
Bluetooth - these things will still be worked on, as well as general usability.
Even with these things missing, QEMU should provide substantial help in
debugging kernel and u-boot issues to developers.
What QEMU can *not* be used for, and probably no other emulator can, is
speed measures and getting the general feel of OpenMoko performance.
Code running in qemu runs with the maximum speed your host computer
can provide with an overhead of translating target code to host code, and
this overhead is not uniform across different instructions. This means that
even if your virtual Neo reports near 100 BogoMIPS (which is the speed of
a real Neo), different actions performed in the emulator will not run with
the same speed. On most PCs you will notice the real Neo running faster
than a virtuel one.
What hardware is supported
Rough status for each of the components that need emulation, following
the outline of Neo1973 Hardware page.
Hardware Status
Usage notes
S3C2410A Processor
ARM920T core Works Already in mainline QEMU.