Virtual Firmware API for Pre-Silicon Driver Development

Copyright (c) 2011 Kabiru Ahmed, Ahmed Bohliqa, Jacob Keller, 
                   Joel Murphy, Cuong Nguyen

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a 
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including 
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, 
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to 
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to 
the following conditions: 

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included 
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. 

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS 
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF 
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. 
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY 
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, 
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE 
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. 


About the Project 
================= 

Virtual Firmware (hereafter referred to as "the Project") is a project, 
in cooperation with Intel Corporation, under the Software Engineering 
Capstone program at Portland State University. Its purpose is to build a 
set of tools for simulating a hardware environment to allow driver 
developers to test their drivers without "working silicon." 

The particular project with Intel involves communicating between a 
driver and a firmware. 


Components of the Project
=========================

We are working with QEMU-KVM to create two running virtual machines. On 
the first virtual machine (VM) is an emulator running the ThreadX RTOS 
with a proprietary firmware created by Intel (this component is not 
available on the public domain). The second VM is running Fedora 14 
Linux with a modified Intel e1000 driver and virtual hardware component. 

Between the two VMs is a sockets library, allowing for metacommunication 
between the driver and firmware, outside the normal communications chain 
for QEMU networking. 


Requirements
============
This API was developed using Express Logic ThreadX RTOS. The following 
files protected under a proprietary license and must be supplied by the 
developer: 

tx.lib
tx_api.h
tx_port.h

The library should be put in the project's root folder and the headers 
should be put in the vf_tx folder.


About the Software Engineering Capstone
=======================================

Portland State University (PSU) operates non-traditional requirements 
for the general education requirements of an accredited university. Part 
of that requirement is a "Senior Capstone" where the members of a team 
work with the community on a significant project. Numerous capstones, 
representing varied disciplines, exist, one of which is a Software 
Engineering capstone. 

The Software Engineering capstone takes the form of building a software 
product with a team for sponsors in the local area. The overall project 
is meant to approximate the working conditions of working for a 
"customer," gathering requirements, building a specification, research, 
design, coding, distribution, etc. 


Members of the Project Team
===========================
Project Manger   Ahmed Bohliqa
Coder            Jacob Keller
Coder            Joel Murphy
Tester           Kabiru "Kaybee" Ahmed
Researcher       Cuong Nguen