Nuvoton iBMC boards (kudo-bmc, mori-bmc, npcm750-evb, quanta-gbs-bmc, quanta-gsj, npcm845-evb)

The Nuvoton iBMC_ chips are a family of Arm-based SoCs that are designed to be used as Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs) in various servers. Currently there are two families: NPCM7XX series and NPCM8XX series. NPCM7XX series feature one or two Arm Cortex-A9 CPU cores, while NPCM8XX feature 4 Arm Cortex-A35 CPU cores. Both series contain a different assortment of peripherals targeted for either Enterprise or Data Center / Hyperscale applications.

.. _Nuvoton iBMC: https://www.nuvoton.com/products/cloud-computing/ibmc/

The NPCM750 SoC has two Cortex-A9 cores and is targeted for the Enterprise segment. The following machines are based on this chip :

• npcm750-evb Nuvoton NPCM750 Evaluation board

The NPCM730 SoC has two Cortex-A9 cores and is targeted for Data Center and Hyperscale applications. The following machines are based on this chip :

• quanta-gbs-bmc Quanta GBS server BMC
• quanta-gsj Quanta GSJ server BMC
• kudo-bmc Fii USA Kudo server BMC
• mori-bmc Fii USA Mori server BMC

There are also two more SoCs, NPCM710 and NPCM705, which are single-core variants of NPCM750 and NPCM730, respectively. These are currently not supported by QEMU.

The NPCM8xx SoC is the successor of the NPCM7xx SoC. It has 4 Cortex-A35 cores. The following machines are based on this chip :

• npcm845-evb Nuvoton NPCM845 Evaluation board

Supported devices

• SMP (Dual Core Cortex-A9)
• Cortex-A9MPCore built-in peripherals: SCU, GIC, Global Timer, Private Timer and Watchdog.
• SRAM, ROM and DRAM mappings
• System Global Control Registers (GCR)
• Clock and reset controller (CLK)
• Timer controller (TIM)
• Serial ports (16550-based)
• DDR4 memory controller (dummy interface indicating memory training is done)
• OTP controllers (no protection features)
• Flash Interface Unit (FIU; no protection features)
• Random Number Generator (RNG)
• USB host (USBH)
• GPIO controller
• Analog to Digital Converter (ADC)
• Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
• SMBus controller (SMBF)
• Ethernet controller (EMC)
• Tachometer
• Peripheral SPI controller (PSPI)

Missing devices

• LPC/eSPI host-to-BMC interface, including

  • Keyboard and mouse controller interface (KBCI)
  • Keyboard Controller Style (KCS) channels
  • BIOS POST code FIFO
  • System Wake-up Control (SWC)
  • Shared memory (SHM)
  • eSPI slave interface
  • Block-transfer interface (8XX only)
  • Virtual UART (8XX only)

• Ethernet controller (GMAC)

• USB device (USBD)

• SD/MMC host

• PECI interface

• PCI and PCIe root complex and bridges

• VDM and MCTP support

• Serial I/O expansion

• LPC/eSPI host

• Coprocessor

• Graphics

• Video capture

• Encoding compression engine

• Security features

• I3C buses (8XX only)

• Temperature sensor interface (8XX only)

• Virtual UART (8XX only)

• Flash monitor (8XX only)

• JTAG master (8XX only)

Boot options

The Nuvoton machines can boot from an OpenBMC firmware image, or directly into a kernel using the -kernel option. OpenBMC machine names do not always match QEMU machine names. Check the OpenBMC supported-machine list and Jenkins for currently available source and pre-built images.

Known OpenBMC (v2.18.0) target names for QEMU Nuvoton machines per:

https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/blob/2.18.0/meta-phosphor/docs/supported-machines.md

.. list-table:: :header-rows: 1

• • QEMU machine
  • OpenBMC machine
• • npcm750-evb
  • evb-npcm750
• • npcm845-evb
  • evb-npcm845
• • quanta-gbs-bmc
  • gbs
• • kudo-bmc
  • kudo
• • mori-bmc
  • mori

As of June 2026, the latest OpenBMC release, 2.18.0, no longer lists a gsj machine. To build an image for QEMU's quanta-gsj machine, use an older OpenBMC release that still contains meta-quanta/meta-gsj. The 2.14.0 release contains the gsj machine:

https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/tree/2.14.0/meta-quanta/meta-gsj

Some pre-built OpenBMC images for QEMU Nuvoton machines may be available on Jenkins:

https://jenkins.openbmc.org/

To find a pre-built MTD image on Jenkins, start from the Jenkins home page and open the latest-master job. Select the matrix configuration whose target matches the OpenBMC machine name, for example label=docker-builder,target=gbs, then open its latest successful build's artifacts. The MTD image is usually published under openbmc/build/tmp/deploy/images/<machine>/ as obmc-phosphor-image-<machine>-<timestamp>.static.mtd. If Jenkins does not list a matching target, or the build artifacts do not include an MTD image, there is no current pre-built MTD image for that machine.

The firmware image should be attached as an MTD drive. Example:

.. code-block:: bash

$ qemu-system-arm -machine quanta-gbs-bmc -nographic
-drive file=obmc-phosphor-image-gbs-xxxxxx.static.mtd,if=mtd,bus=0,unit=0,format=raw

The default root password for test images is usually 0penBmc.

For other machines that don't have pre-built images on Jenkins, build an image from source by following the OpenBMC build documentation.