Boot TX2i from NVMe/mSATA/USB without *any use of* eMMC?

Robotics & Edge Computing Jetson & Embedded Systems Jetson TX2
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Hi, I’m attempting to resolve an issue for a customer where they would like to completely avoid using eMMC to boot from, and shift the entire boot process to an attached NVMe/USB/mSATA boot device. I’ve read the guide located at Jetson/L4T/Boot From External Device - eLinux.org but this notes: “This method will tell the system to mount the rootfs on external devices (USB, SATA, NVMe).” It does not mention moving UBoot or other necessary early boot files, as I understand NVMe/mSATA drives they’re laid out entirely differently from eMMC or SD cards, and the guidance doesn’t seem to lend itself to partitioning one as the other (to accommodate UBoot files).

Can anyone from NVidia definitively confirm that TX2i must boot from eMMC for at least part of the boot, or instead provide instructions that point to the proper way to move all the early boot files to an NVMe or mSATA drive appropriately?

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Hi,

Yes, I can confirm that the boot process cannot totally move to external devices. The early bootloader can only be on internal boot device as emmc.

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Thank you so much for the quick response!

I did see that currently QSPI lines are muxed to support camera lines on the TX2i. It would be a great boot option to support looking for boot QSPI if a customer chose to wire such a device to those lines.