Oh, interesting. Bootcode that was ROM in previous Raspberry Pi models is now moved to EEPROM in the Raspberry Pi 4. This has the potential, most importantly, to introduce boot from USB after shipping, and eventually network boot, I would be led to believe. Also important is mention of how to recover from a corrupted bootloader, and the fact that boot settings are no longer One Time Programmable (OTP), it’s all in rewritable memory.
20200821/DuckDuckGo rpi-eeprom
20200821/https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/booteeprom.md
And the really good news about this? Finally, PXE boot is available in beta for Raspberry Pi 4!
20200821/DuckDuckGo raspberry pi 4 pxe boot
20200821/https://hackaday.com/2019/11/11/network-booting-the-pi-4/
Oh, okay, I see how the ID EEPROM works. It contains a device tree
fragment that allows Linux to automagically load the required
drivers. So then, it just comes down to making sure you have the
drivers installed into the Linux system drivers directory, no need to
include them in your /etc/modules startup file.
20200821/DuckDuckGo raspberry pi id eeprom
20200821/https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/50348/what-are-the-id-eeprom-pins-and-what-can-they-be-used-for
Wow… built-in Wi-Fi & Bluetooth, 64-bit, 4 cores, virtualization, PXE network boot, Vulkan, it’s all coming together. Pretty soon, with addition of a proper power management system, Raspberry Pi will be able to take on the “big boys” in the PC industry.