Hello,
as you know PULPissimo has an option to boot from flash by setting the LOAD_L2 parameter in the tb_pulp.sv to STANDALONE.
As far as I know it won't actually boot from flash but instead load the data from flash to the L2 and execute it. Is this still the case?
So I was running the hello example from the pulp_rt_examples using the STANDALONE variant.
This works just fine but I was wondering about the contents of the different memories after the end of the computation.
We can see that when using STANDALONE the flash memory uses its preload feature to contain "slm_files/flash_stim.slm" which should be the image of the hello example.
When instead using JTAG there is a different image loaded into L2 called stim.txt.
There are several question which I hope someone can answer:
Is there a reason why the actual data from those images is different?
I'm not talking about formatting but rather the actual data itself.
For example:
The first few lines of the .slm file:
@00000000 00
@00000001 70
@00000002 00
@00000003 00
@00000004 04
@00000005 00
@00000006 00
@00000007 00
@00000008 80
@00000009 80
@0000000A 00
@0000000B 1C
The first few lines of the .txt file:
1C000000_0000000000000000
1C000008_0000000000000000
1C000010_0000000000000000
I'm pretty sure that the memory called "boot rom" contains the boot code which is unrelated to the executed (hello example) code. Is this correct?
The code of the hello example should reside somewhere in L2. Now using QuestaSim to check the contents of the different L2 sections I get confused.
There is some data in .../bank_sram_pri0_i/MEM which looks a bit scattered as there are some undefined entries.
The data in .../bank_sram_pri1_i/MEM is more coherent.
Also there is a bit of data in every 0 cut of every CUT X.
By that i mean ...CUTS[X]/RTL_0/bank_i/cut_0/MEM.
What actually resides in pri0, pri1, cut_0?
I found the data of the stim.txt in L2 (in pri0 but not starting at 0x00000000) but not in a coherent way.
Why is this the case even tho I am using STANDALONE instead of JTAG.
In regards to my previous question there is also the boot-code repo which is what I am currently trying to extend.
If I'm not mistaken the boot_code.cde which I linked to in the above post is the binary of the boot_code.c found in this repo, is that correct?
Looking at the linker script link.ld we can see that there are only two entries in the memory table: ROM and L2.
How is data actually relocated from flash to L2? As far as I remember the flash is not memory mapped or is it?
I'm trying to modify the files in a way which allows me to load (preloaded) data from flash to defined addresses in L2, similar to how the (preloaded) hello example has to somehow be relocated.
Unfortunately I'm not allowed to modify boot_code.c so I'm guessing I have to modify the linker script link.ld and the main startup file crt0.S or add additional files.
Does anyone know if it is actually possible to load data from an arbitrary address in flash to an arbitrary address in L2 during boot phase?
Thank you,
LPLA
as you know PULPissimo has an option to boot from flash by setting the LOAD_L2 parameter in the tb_pulp.sv to STANDALONE.
As far as I know it won't actually boot from flash but instead load the data from flash to the L2 and execute it. Is this still the case?
So I was running the hello example from the pulp_rt_examples using the STANDALONE variant.
This works just fine but I was wondering about the contents of the different memories after the end of the computation.
We can see that when using STANDALONE the flash memory uses its preload feature to contain "slm_files/flash_stim.slm" which should be the image of the hello example.
When instead using JTAG there is a different image loaded into L2 called stim.txt.
There are several question which I hope someone can answer:
Is there a reason why the actual data from those images is different?
I'm not talking about formatting but rather the actual data itself.
For example:
The first few lines of the .slm file:
@00000000 00
@00000001 70
@00000002 00
@00000003 00
@00000004 04
@00000005 00
@00000006 00
@00000007 00
@00000008 80
@00000009 80
@0000000A 00
@0000000B 1C
The first few lines of the .txt file:
1C000000_0000000000000000
1C000008_0000000000000000
1C000010_0000000000000000
I'm pretty sure that the memory called "boot rom" contains the boot code which is unrelated to the executed (hello example) code. Is this correct?
The code of the hello example should reside somewhere in L2. Now using QuestaSim to check the contents of the different L2 sections I get confused.
There is some data in .../bank_sram_pri0_i/MEM which looks a bit scattered as there are some undefined entries.
The data in .../bank_sram_pri1_i/MEM is more coherent.
Also there is a bit of data in every 0 cut of every CUT X.
By that i mean ...CUTS[X]/RTL_0/bank_i/cut_0/MEM.
What actually resides in pri0, pri1, cut_0?
I found the data of the stim.txt in L2 (in pri0 but not starting at 0x00000000) but not in a coherent way.
Why is this the case even tho I am using STANDALONE instead of JTAG.
In regards to my previous question there is also the boot-code repo which is what I am currently trying to extend.
If I'm not mistaken the boot_code.cde which I linked to in the above post is the binary of the boot_code.c found in this repo, is that correct?
Looking at the linker script link.ld we can see that there are only two entries in the memory table: ROM and L2.
How is data actually relocated from flash to L2? As far as I remember the flash is not memory mapped or is it?
I'm trying to modify the files in a way which allows me to load (preloaded) data from flash to defined addresses in L2, similar to how the (preloaded) hello example has to somehow be relocated.
Unfortunately I'm not allowed to modify boot_code.c so I'm guessing I have to modify the linker script link.ld and the main startup file crt0.S or add additional files.
Does anyone know if it is actually possible to load data from an arbitrary address in flash to an arbitrary address in L2 during boot phase?
Thank you,
LPLA