[Cryptech Tech] Alpha board flash

[Rob Austein]

If I understand correctly, the current schematics have both hard-wired
flash for the ARM CPU and also space for an SD card, with the ARM set
up to boot (only) from the hard-wired flash.

a) Is this correct?

b) If so, why do we have the SD card, and is its intended purpose
   serious enough to merit including yet another driver?

   Keep in mind that removing the SD card presumably involves breaking
   the tamper envelope, thus wiping the key store.

c) Why are we using hard-wired flash at all, instead of, eg, just
   booting from an SD card?  Fear of SD card complexity (if so, see
   (b)...)?

d) If I understand correctly (questionable), SD cards take care of
   wear leveling.  I'm guessing that the hardwired flash envisioned
   for the Alpha board does not, ie, that our driver for the
   hard-wired flash may need to deal with wear-leveling itself.

   I don't really know how many write cycles we expect the hard-wired
   flash to have, so I'm not sure how serious an issue this is.

Apologies if some of this is a bit vague, software guy trying to
understand reasoning behind hardware choices.