Actually when we tried qemu for running "smp linux", and it ran fine with "realview-pbx-a9" board with "-smp 4". Where it booted up with 4 core configuration.
For the same reason we were selected "realview-pbx-a9" board configuration when doing "make config" for L4 microkernel under the assumption that it would run. But the board check itself is failing afterwards (for qemu).
If you could recommend any board which can be used for the "multicore development" it would be great :).
We really liked the documentation and the code support which is available with fiasco group for the same reason we wanted to have fiasco as our primary candidate for experimentations. Please let me know if with some effort we would be able to bring up the multicore microkernel, i might be able to help out in case some effort is required for the unimplemented part.
Some misc logs for quick reference from smp-linux kernel bootup validating the pbx-a9 board working fine with -smp configuration.
novino@naveen-linux:~/Downloads$ qemu-system-arm -M realview-pbx-a9 -cpu cortex-a9 -kernel zImage_multithread -m 256 -smp 4 -nographic
Uncompressing Linux............................................................................................................................................................................................ done, booting the kernel.
Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
Linux version 2.6.28-arm2 (root@test) (gcc version 4.2.2) #27 SMP Tue Oct 19 20:37:18 KST 2010
CPU: ARMv7 Processor [410fc090] revision 0 (ARMv7), cr=10c03c7f
CPU: VIPT nonaliasing data cache, VIPT nonaliasing instruction cache
Machine: ARM-RealView PBX
Ignoring unrecognised tag 0x00000000
Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writealloc
Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on. Total pages: 65024
Kernel command line: root=/dev/ram0 rw initrd=0x800000, 0x80000 console=ttyAMA0 mem=256M
PID hash table entries: 1024 (order: 10, 4096 bytes)
Console: colour dummy device 80x30
Dentry cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Memory: 256MB = 256MB total
Memory: 253568KB available (3380K code, 276K data, 2276K init)
SLUB: Genslabs=12, HWalign=32, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=4, Nodes=1
Calibrating delay loop... 26.16 BogoMIPS (lpj=130816)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 512
CPU: Testing write buffer coherency: ok
Calibrating local timer... 95.59MHz.
L2X0 cache controller enabled
CPU1: Booted secondary processor
Calibrating delay loop... 26.11 BogoMIPS (lpj=130560)
CPU2: Booted secondary processor
Calibrating delay loop... 73.93 BogoMIPS (lpj=369664)
CPU3: Booted secondary processor
Calibrating delay loop... 163.84 BogoMIPS (lpj=819200)
Brought up 4 CPUs
SMP: Total of 4 processors activated (290.04 BogoMIPS).