J7200 Platforms

Introduction:

The J7200 family of SoCs are part of K3 Multicore SoC architecture platform targeting automotive applications. They are designed as a low power, high performance and highly integrated device architecture, adding significant enhancement on processing power, graphics capability, video and imaging processing, virtualization and coherent memory support.

The device is partitioned into three functional domains, each containing specific processing cores and peripherals:

  1. Wake-up (WKUP) domain:
    • Device Management and Security Controller (DMSC)

  2. Microcontroller (MCU) domain:
    • Dual Core ARM Cortex-R5F processor

  3. MAIN domain:
    • Dual core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72

More info can be found in TRM: https://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/spruiu1

Platform information:

Boot Flow:

Below is the pictorial representation of boot flow:

Boot flow diagram
  • Here DMSC acts as master and provides all the critical services. R5/A72 requests DMSC to get these services done as shown in the above diagram.

Sources:

Note

The TI Firmware required for functionality of the system can be one of the following combination (see platform specific boot diagram for further information as to which component runs on which processor):

  • TIFS - TI Foundational Security Firmware - Consists of purely firmware meant to run on the security enclave.

  • DM - Device Management firmware also called TI System Control Interface server (TISCI Server) - This component purely plays the role of managing device resources such as power, clock, interrupts, dma etc. This firmware runs on a dedicated or multi-use microcontroller outside the security enclave.

OR

  • SYSFW - System firmware - consists of both TIFS and DM both running on the security enclave.

Build procedure:

  1. Setup the environment variables:

Generic environment variables

S/w Component

Env Variable

Description

All Software

CC32

Cross compiler for ARMv7 (ARM 32bit), typically arm-linux-gnueabihf-

All Software

CC64

Cross compiler for ARMv8 (ARM 64bit), typically aarch64-linux-gnu-

All Software

LNX_FW_PATH

Path to TI Linux firmware repository

All Software

TFA_PATH

Path to source of Trusted Firmware-A

All Software

OPTEE_PATH

Path to source of OP-TEE

Board specific environment variables

S/w Component

Env Variable

Description

U-Boot

UBOOT_CFG_CORTEXR

Defconfig for Cortex-R (Boot processor).

U-Boot

UBOOT_CFG_CORTEXA

Defconfig for Cortex-A (MPU processor).

Trusted Firmware-A

TFA_BOARD

Platform name used for building TF-A for Cortex-A Processor.

Trusted Firmware-A

TFA_EXTRA_ARGS

Any extra arguments used for building TF-A.

OP-TEE

OPTEE_PLATFORM

Platform name used for building OP-TEE for Cortex-A Processor.

OP-TEE

OPTEE_EXTRA_ARGS

Any extra arguments used for building OP-TEE.

Set the variables corresponding to this platform:

export CC32=arm-linux-gnueabihf-
export CC64=aarch64-linux-gnu-
export LNX_FW_PATH=path/to/ti-linux-firmware
export TFA_PATH=path/to/trusted-firmware-a
export OPTEE_PATH=path/to/optee_os
export UBOOT_CFG_CORTEXR=j7200_evm_r5_defconfig
export UBOOT_CFG_CORTEXA=j7200_evm_a72_defconfig
export TFA_BOARD=generic
# we dont use any extra TFA parameters
unset TFA_EXTRA_ARGS
export OPTEE_PLATFORM=k3-j7200
# we dont use any extra OP-TEE parameters
unset OPTEE_EXTRA_ARGS
  1. Trusted Firmware-A:

# inside trusted-firmware-a source
make CROSS_COMPILE=$CC64 ARCH=aarch64 PLAT=k3 SPD=opteed $TFA_EXTRA_ARGS \
     TARGET_BOARD=$TFA_BOARD
  1. OP-TEE:

# inside optee_os source
make CROSS_COMPILE=$CC32 CROSS_COMPILE64=$CC64 CFG_ARM64_core=y $OPTEE_EXTRA_ARGS \
      PLATFORM=$OPTEE_PLATFORM
  1. U-Boot:

  • 3.1 R5:

# inside u-boot source
make $UBOOT_CFG_CORTEXR
make CROSS_COMPILE=$CC32 BINMAN_INDIRS=$LNX_FW_PATH
  • 3.2 A72:

# inside u-boot source
make $UBOOT_CFG_CORTEXA
make CROSS_COMPILE=$CC64 BINMAN_INDIRS=$LNX_FW_PATH \
       BL31=$TFA_PATH/build/k3/$TFA_BOARD/release/bl31.bin \
       TEE=$OPTEE_PATH/out/arm-plat-k3/core/tee-raw.bin

Note

It is also possible to pick up a custom DM binary by adding TI_DM argument pointing to the file. If not provided, it defaults to picking up the DM binary from BINMAN_INDIRS. This is only applicable to devices that utilize split firmware.

Target Images

In order to boot we need tiboot3.bin, tispl.bin and u-boot.img. Each SoC variant (GP, HS-FS, HS-SE) requires a different source for these files.

  • GP

    • tiboot3-j7200-gp-evm.bin from step 3.1

    • tispl.bin_unsigned, u-boot.img_unsigned from step 3.2

  • HS-FS

    • tiboot3-j7200_sr2-hs-fs-evm.bin from step 3.1

    • tispl.bin, u-boot.img from step 3.2

  • HS-SE

    • tiboot3-j7200_sr2-hs-evm.bin from step 3.1

    • tispl.bin, u-boot.img from step 3.2

Image formats:

  • tiboot3.bin

tiboot3.bin image format
  • tispl.bin

tispl.bin image format

Switch Setting for Boot Mode

Boot Mode pins provide means to select the boot mode and options before the device is powered up. After every POR, they are the main source to populate the Boot Parameter Tables.

The following table shows some common boot modes used on J7200 platform. More details can be found in the Technical Reference Manual: https://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/spruiu1 under the Boot Mode Pins section.

Boot Modes

Switch Label

SW9: 12345678

SW8: 12345678

SD

00000000

10000010

EMMC

01000000

10000000

OSPI

01000000

00000110

UART

01110000

00000000

USB DFU

00100000

10000000

For SW8 and SW9, the switch state in the “ON” position = 1.

eMMC:

ROM supports booting from eMMC raw read or UDA FS mode.

Below is memory layout in case of booting from boot 0/1 partition in raw mode.

Current allocated size for tiboot3 size is 1MB, tispl is 2MB.

Size of u-boot.img is taken 4MB for refernece, But this is subject to change depending upon atf, optee size

Traditional eMMC boot partition layout

In case of UDA FS mode booting, following is layout.

All boot images tiboot3.bin, tispl and u-boot should be written to fat formatted UDA FS as file.

eMMC UDA boot partition layout

In case of booting from eMMC, write above images into raw or UDA FS. and set mmc partconf accordingly.

Debugging U-Boot

See Common Debugging environment - OpenOCD: for detailed setup information.

Warning

OpenOCD support since: v0.12.0

If the default package version of OpenOCD in your development environment’s distribution needs to be updated, it might be necessary to build OpenOCD from the source.

Integrated JTAG adapter/dongle: The board has a micro-USB connector labelled XDS110 USB or JTAG. Connect a USB cable to the board to the mentioned port.

Note

There are multiple USB ports on a typical board, So, ensure you have read the user guide for the board and confirmed the silk screen label to ensure connecting to the correct port.

To start OpenOCD and connect to the board

openocd -f board/ti_j7200evm.cfg