For me, IPC timeout of 3sec and boot timeout of 5sec work out of the box (qemu running on a pretty low end desktop system). Trying to play a stream still fails as HW_PARAMS IPC times out, but the reason is probably similar -- did not try to debug this yet. E.g. alsamixer can be used, so the DSP is alive and well, but timeouts can be easily hit.
In my case, the topology only seem to get loaded successfully if I disable the firmware tracing in the driver. Otherwise it's failing no matter how much I increase the timeouts.
I also noted that we have some timing-related problem in the DSP boot. I had not noticed this before as I've run the xtensa qemu always with "-s -S" (or -d to the xtensa-host.sh script) flags. Today when I tried without, the firmware boot started failing systematically. But this is not related to FW/SW versions, but rather something to do with timing. When running with debugs enabled, DSP boot is pretty reliable for me.
I can confirm the firmware not booting up when started without the gdb option. However, on my machine hooking up with gdb to the qemu dsp host doesn't seem to work either:
dtarcatu@brick:/caddy/sof-latest/sof/build_byt$ xtensa-byt-elf-gdb sof GNU gdb (crosstool-NG 1.23.0.436-5311) 8.1 Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying" and "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "--host=x86_64-build_pc-linux-gnu --target=xtensa-byt-elf". Type "show configuration" for configuration details. For bug reporting instructions, please see: http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/. Find the GDB manual and other documentation resources online at: http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/documentation/. For help, type "help". Type "apropos word" to search for commands related to "word"... Reading symbols from sof...done. (gdb) target remote :1234 Remote debugging using :1234 Remote 'g' packet reply is too long (expected 304 bytes, got 632 bytes): 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 (gdb)
Regards, Dragoș