Cortex-M4 Bootloader Infinite Loop and Hard Fault Generation The issue at hand involves a Cortex-M4 slave core in a multicore system failing to boot reliably. The master core loads the application for the Cortex-M4 slave core, which is expected to execute the boot file (c_int00) and then jump to the main application. However, the system…
ARM Cortex-A53 Neon Intrinsics Performance Issues at O3 Optimization Issue Overview: Neon Intrinsics Code Performance and Compiler Behavior The core issue revolves around the performance and behavior of Neon intrinsics code when compiled with GCC (aarch64-none-elf-gcc) at the highest optimization level (-O3) for the ARM Cortex-A53 processor. The user is working on a bare-metal application…
Developing Middleware Firmware for Multi-Vendor ARM Cortex-M Devices Developing middleware firmware that operates seamlessly across multiple ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers from different vendors, such as STMicroelectronics (STM32), NXP (LPC), and Cypress (PSoC), presents a unique set of challenges. The primary goal is to create a codebase that abstracts hardware differences while maintaining compatibility with peripherals like…
ARM Cortex-A53 Cache Maintenance Operations: DCIMVAC vs. DCCIMVAC The ARM Cortex-A53 processor, a widely used core in embedded systems, implements sophisticated cache maintenance operations to ensure data consistency and system performance. Two such operations, DCIMVAC (Data Cache Invalidate by Modified Virtual Address to PoC) and DCCIMVAC (Data Cache Clean and Invalidate by Modified Virtual Address…
ARM Cortex-M33 DSP Capabilities and ARM_MATH_DSP Compilation Flags The ARM Cortex-M33 processor, part of the ARMv8-M architecture, integrates a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) extension, which provides enhanced capabilities for signal processing tasks. These capabilities include single-cycle multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations, saturating arithmetic, and SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) instructions. The CMSIS-DSP library, a suite of common…
AXI Fixed Burst Mechanism and WSTRB Signal Interpretation The AXI (Advanced eXtensible Interface) protocol is a widely used on-chip communication standard for high-performance embedded systems. One of its key features is the ability to perform burst transfers, which allow multiple data transactions to occur in a single operation. Among the burst types supported by AXI,…
Enabling L2 Cache for MMU Page Tables in Cortex-A9 The ARM Cortex-A9 processor, commonly used in embedded systems, provides a Memory Management Unit (MMU) that supports virtual memory management through page tables. These page tables are typically stored in DDR memory, which is often configured as non-cacheable by default to ensure coherency and avoid stale…
AXI ID Bit Width Mismatch in Multi-Processor Systems with A15 and R7 Cores In multi-processor ARM systems, integrating different cores such as the Cortex-A15 and Cortex-R7 on separate AXI buses can introduce challenges when attempting to establish communication between the two systems. One such challenge is the conflict arising from the AXI ID bit width…
ARM Cortex-M4 Processor Architecture and Command Execution Flow The ARM Cortex-M4 processor is a highly efficient 32-bit RISC processor designed for embedded applications, particularly those requiring digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities. To understand what happens inside the Cortex-M4 when it executes a command, such as changing the color of a smart bulb, we need to…
Cortex-A35 DDR3 Read Access Latency and Bandwidth Discrepancies The Cortex-A35, a power-efficient ARMv8-A processor, is designed for low-power applications but still requires careful tuning to achieve optimal memory performance. In this analysis, we focus on the observed discrepancies between DDR3 read and write bandwidths, specifically in the context of the i.MX 8X SoC with DDR3L-1866…