patches and low-level development discussion

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 = Hardware and firmware requirements
:page-parent: About Spectrum

// SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2024 Alyssa Ross <hi@alyssa.is>
// SPDX-License-Identifier: GFDL-1.3-no-invariants-or-later OR CC-BY-SA-4.0

== Firmware requirements

Firmware must implement either
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFI[UEFI] or the
https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/boot_loader_specification/[Boot
Loader Specification].  If the firmware provides a device tree,
Spectrum will use
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd-stub.html[systemd-stub]'s
`.dtbauto` mechanism to attempt to load a matching device tree from Linux.

== Hardware requirements

- aarch64 or x86_64 processor with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization#Hardware_assisted[virtualization extensions]
- GICv3 or later with Interrupt Translation Services (on aarch64)
- PCI network controller on a cache-coherent
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input%E2%80%93output_memory_management_unit[IOMMU]
  (for network access) — some may not work due to Cloud Hypervisor
  bugs

All hardware to be used with Spectrum must be supported in the
mainline Linux kernel that Spectrum uses.  Only device firmware
included by NixOS's `hardware.enableRedistributableFirmware` option
will be provided by Spectrum.