diff --git a/README b/README
index 2c4bde0..623f359 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -166,27 +166,6 @@
 Software Configuration:
 =======================
 
-Configuration is usually done using C preprocessor defines; the
-rationale behind that is to avoid dead code whenever possible.
-
-There are two classes of configuration variables:
-
-* Configuration _OPTIONS_:
-  These are selectable by the user and have names beginning with
-  "CONFIG_".
-
-* Configuration _SETTINGS_:
-  These depend on the hardware etc. and should not be meddled with if
-  you don't know what you're doing; they have names beginning with
-  "CONFIG_SYS_".
-
-Previously, all configuration was done by hand, which involved creating
-symbolic links and editing configuration files manually. More recently,
-U-Boot has added the Kbuild infrastructure used by the Linux kernel,
-allowing you to use the "make menuconfig" command to configure your
-build.
-
-
 Selection of Processor Architecture and Board Type:
 ---------------------------------------------------
 
diff --git a/doc/develop/index.rst b/doc/develop/index.rst
index 73741ce..7c41e3f 100644
--- a/doc/develop/index.rst
+++ b/doc/develop/index.rst
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@
    designprinciples
    process
    release_cycle
+   system_configuration
 
 Implementation
 --------------
diff --git a/doc/develop/system_configuration.rst b/doc/develop/system_configuration.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52e4e1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/doc/develop/system_configuration.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,132 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
+
+System configuration
+====================
+
+There are a number of different aspects to configuring U-Boot to build and then
+run on a given platform or set of platforms. Broadly speaking, some aspects of
+the world can be configured at run time and others must be done at build time.
+In general run time configuration is preferred over build time configuration.
+But when making these decisions, we also need to consider if we're talking about
+a feature that could be useful to virtually every platform or something specific
+to a single hardware platform. The resulting image size is also another
+important consideration. Finally, run time configuration has additional overhead
+both in terms of resource requirements and wall clock time. All of this means
+that care must be taken when writing new code to select the most appropriate
+configuration mechanism.
+
+When adding new features to U-Boot, be they a new subsystem or SoC support or
+new platform for an existing supported SoC, the preferred configuration order
+is:
+
+#. Hardware based run time configuration. Examples of this include reading
+   processor specific registers, or a set of board specific GPIOs or an EEPROM
+   with a known format to it. These are the cases where we either cannot or
+   should not be relying on device tree checks. We use this for cases such as
+   optimized boot time or starting with a generic device tree and then enabling
+   or disabling features as we boot.
+
+#. Making use of our Kconfig infrastructure and C preprocessor macros that have
+   the prefix ``CONFIG``. This is the primary method of build time
+   configuration. This is generally the best fit for when we want to enable or
+   disable some sort of feature, such as the SoC or network support. The
+   ``CONFIG`` prefix for C preprocessor macros is strictly reserved for Kconfig
+   usage only.
+
+#. Making use of the :doc:`device tree <devicetree/control>` to determine at
+   run time how to configure a feature that we have enabled via Kconfig. For
+   example, we would use Kconfig to enable an I2C chip driver, but use the device
+   tree to know where the I2C chip resides in memory and other details we need
+   in order to configure the bus.
+
+#. Making use of C header files directly and defining C preprocessor macros that
+   have the ``CFG`` prefix. While the ``CFG`` prefix is reserved for this build
+   time configuration mechanism, the usage is ad hoc. This is to be used when the
+   previously mentioned mechanisms are not possible, or for legacy code that has
+   not been converted.
+
+Dynamic run time configuration methods.
+---------------------------------------
+
+Details of hardware specific run time configuration methods are found within the
+documentation for a given processor family or board.
+
+Details of how to use run time configuration based on :doc:`driver model
+<driver-model/index>` are covered in that documentation section.
+
+Static build time configuration methods
+---------------------------------------
+
+There are two mechanisms used to control the build time configuration of U-Boot.
+One is utilizing Kconfig and ``CONFIG`` prefixed macros and the other is ad hoc
+usage of ``CFG`` prefixed macros. Both of these are used when it is either not
+possible or not practical to make a run time determination about some
+functionality of the hardware or a required software feature or similar. Each of
+these has their own places where they are better suited than the other for use.
+
+The `Kconfig language
+<https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/kbuild/kconfig-language.html>`_ is well
+documented and used in a number of projects, including the Linux kernel. We
+implement this with the Kconfig files found throughout our sources. This
+mechanism is the preferred way of exposing new configuration options as there
+are a number of ways for both users and system integrators to manage and change
+these options. Some common examples here are to enable a specific command within
+U-Boot or even a whole subsystem such as NAND flash or network connectivity.
+
+The ``CFG`` mechanism is implemented directly as C preprocessor values or
+macros, depending on what they are in turn describing. While we have some
+functionality that is very reasonable to expose to the end user to enable or
+disable we have other places where we need to describe things such as register
+locations or values, memory map ranges and so on. When practical, we should be
+getting these values from the device tree. However, there are cases where this
+is either not practical due to when we need the information and may not have a
+device tree yet or due to legacy reasons code has not been rewritten.
+
+When to use each mechanism
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+While there are some cases where it should be fairly obvious where to use each
+mechanism, as for example a command would done via Kconfig, a new I2C driver
+should use Kconfig and be configured via driver model and a header of values
+generated by an external tool should be ``CFG``, there will be cases where it's
+less clear and one needs to take care when implementing it. In general,
+configuration *options* should be done in Kconfig and configuration *settings*
+should done in driver model or ``CFG``. Let us discuss things to keep in mind
+when picking the appropriate mechanism.
+
+A thing to keep in mind is that we have a strong preference for using Kconfig as
+the primary build time configuration mechanism. Options expressed this way let
+us easily express dependencies and abstractions. In addition, given that many
+projects use this mechanism means it has a broad set of tooling and existing
+knowledge base.
+
+Consider the example of a SHA256 hardware acceleration engine. This would be a
+feature of the SoC and so something to not ask the user if it exists, but we
+would want to have our generic framework for such engines be optionally
+available and depend on knowing we have this engine on a given hardware
+platform. Expressing this should be done as a hidden Kconfig symbol that is
+``select``'ed by the SoC symbol which would in turn be ``select``'ed by the
+board option, which is user visible. Hardware features that are either present
+or not present should be expressed in Kconfig and in a similar manner, features
+which will always have a constant value such as "this SoC always has 4 cores and
+4 threads per core" should be as well.
+
+This brings us to differentiating between a configuration *setting* versus a
+hardware feature. To build on the previous example, while we may know the number
+of cores and threads, it's possible that within a given family of SoCs the base
+addresses of peripherals has changed, but the register offsets within have not.
+The preference in this case is to get our information from the device tree and
+perform run time configuration. However, this is not always practical and in
+those cases we instead rely on the ``CFG`` mechanism. While it would be possible
+to use Kconfig in this case, it would result in using calculated rather than
+constructed values, resulting in less clear code. Consider the example of a set
+of register values for a memory controller. Defining this as a series of logical
+ORs and shifts based on other defines is more clear than the Kconfig entry that
+set the calculated value alone.
+
+When it has been determined that the practical solution is to utilize the
+``CFG`` mechanism, the next decision is where to place these settings. It is
+strongly encouraged to place these in the architecture header files, if they are
+generic to a given SoC, or under the board directory if board specific. Placing
+them under the board.h file in the *include/configs/* directory should be seen
+as a last resort.
diff --git a/doc/uImage.FIT/signature.txt b/doc/uImage.FIT/signature.txt
index 61a72db..c71280b 100644
--- a/doc/uImage.FIT/signature.txt
+++ b/doc/uImage.FIT/signature.txt
@@ -382,6 +382,32 @@
 meantime.
 
 
+Details
+-------
+The signature node contains a property ('hashed-nodes') which lists all the
+nodes that the signature was made over.  The image is walked in order and each
+tag processed as follows:
+- DTB_BEGIN_NODE: The tag and the following name are included in the signature
+  if the node or its parent are present in 'hashed-nodes'
+- DTB_END_NODE: The tag is included in the signature if the node or its parent
+  are present in 'hashed-nodes'
+- DTB_PROPERTY: The tag, the length word, the offset in the string table, and
+  the data are all included if the current node is present in 'hashed-nodes'
+  and the property name is not 'data'.
+- DTB_END: The tag is always included in the signature.
+- DTB_NOP: The tag is included in the signature if the current node is present
+  in 'hashed-nodes'
+
+In addition, the signature contains a property 'hashed-strings' which contains
+the offset and length in the string table of the strings that are to be
+included in the signature (this is done last).
+
+IMPORTANT:  To verify the signature outside u-boot, it is vital to not only
+calculate the hash of the image and verify the signature with that, but also to
+calculate the hashes of the kernel, fdt, and ramdisk images and check those
+match the hash values in the corresponding 'hash*' subnodes.
+
+
 Verification
 ------------
 FITs are verified when loaded. After the configuration is selected a list
diff --git a/doc/usage/environment.rst b/doc/usage/environment.rst
index 83543f6..561076b 100644
--- a/doc/usage/environment.rst
+++ b/doc/usage/environment.rst
@@ -404,6 +404,56 @@
 ramdisk           ramdiskfile    ramdisk_addr_r   ramdisk_addr
 ================= ============== ================ ==============
 
+When setting the RAM addresses for `kernel_addr_r`, `fdt_addr_r` and
+`ramdisk_addr_r` there are several types of constraints to keep in mind. The
+one type of constraint is payload requirement. For example, a device tree MUST
+be loaded at an 8-byte aligned address as that is what the specification
+requires. In a similar manner, the operating system may define restrictions on
+where in memory space payloads can be. This is documented for example in Linux,
+with both the `Booting ARM Linux`_ and `Booting AArch64 Linux`_ documents.
+Finally, there are practical constraints. We do not know the size of a given
+payload a user will use but each payload must not overlap or it will corrupt
+the other payload. A similar problem can happen when a payload ends up being in
+the OS BSS area. For these reasons we need to ensure our default values here
+are both unlikely to lead to failure to boot and sufficiently explained so that
+they can be optimized for boot time or adjusted for smaller memory
+configurations.
+
+On different architectures we will have different constraints. It is important
+that we follow whatever documented requirements are available to best ensure
+forward compatibility. What follows are examples to highlight how to provide
+reasonable default values in different cases.
+
+Texas Instruments OMAP2PLUS (ARMv7) example
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+On these families of processors we are on a 32bit ARMv7 core.  As booting some
+form of Linux is our most common payload we will also keep in mind the
+documented requirements for booting that Linux provides.  These values are also
+known to be fine for booting a number of other operating systems (or their
+loaders).  In this example we define the following variables and values::
+
+    loadaddr=0x82000000
+    kernel_addr_r=${loadaddr}
+    fdt_addr_r=0x88000000
+    ramdisk_addr_r=0x88080000
+    bootm_size=0x10000000
+
+The first thing to keep in mind is that DRAM starts at 0x80000000. We set a
+32MiB buffer from the start of memory as our default load address and set
+``kernel_addr_r`` to that. This is because the Linux ``zImage`` decompressor
+will typically then be able to avoid doing a relocation itself. It also MUST be
+within the first 128MiB of memory. The next value is we set ``fdt_addr_r`` to
+be at 128MiB offset from the start of memory. This location is suggested by the
+kernel documentation and is exceedingly unlikely to be overwritten by the
+kernel itself given other architectural constraints.  We then allow for the
+device tree to be up to 512KiB in size before placing the ramdisk in memory. We
+then say that everything should be within the first 256MiB of memory so that
+U-Boot can relocate things as needed to ensure proper alignment. We pick 256MiB
+as our value here because we know there are very few platforms on in this
+family with less memory. It could be as high as 768MiB and still ensure that
+everything would be visible to the kernel, but again we go with what we assume
+is the safest assumption.
 
 Automatically updated variables
 -------------------------------
@@ -472,3 +522,6 @@
 --------------
 
 See :doc:`../develop/environment` for internal development details.
+
+.. _`Booting ARM Linux`: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/arm/booting.html
+.. _`Booting AArch64 Linux`: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/arm64/booting.html