Arria 10 - FPGA Boot

[GregD]

Hello. I am working on an Arria 10 project. Using ARM development studio and USB-Blaster I can load and run u-boot, do an NFS mount of the rootfs, and program the eMMC. Afterward, the board successfully boots u-boot 2021.04, programs the FPGA, and runs Linux 5.10.70. I need to create an sof that has integrated u-boot that our production can load and run from the USB-Blaster to be able to perform eMMC programming. I have not been able to find documentation that describes how to create the hex format version of u-boot from compiled u-boot binaries that is needed to create the sof.

Which u-boot binary to use? u-boot-dtb.bin?

How to convert to hex?  arm-linux-gnueabi-objcopy?

etc.

Thanks

[sstrell]

A .sof file cannot include this.  It's strictly for programming the FPGA.  You need a drive image that includes the .sof along with u-boot, etc.

[GregD]

Thanks for the response.

Currently, for this product, there is a .sof that production uses that runs u-boot v2014.10 when in boot-from-FPGA.

~/intelFPGA/21.1/nios2eds/nios2_command_shell.sh \
quartus_pgm -c 1 -m jtag -o "p;boardCheckEmmcProg.sof"

I am trying to recreate boardCheckEmmcProg.sof with newer u-boot v2021.04 but I do not know how to create the hex file that our FPGA engineer needs to create the .sof.

My question:

Which u-boot binary to use? u-boot-dtb.bin?

How to convert to hex?  arm-linux-gnueabi-objcopy?

[EricMunYew_C_Intel]

You can refer to below for FPGA boot in Arria 10 SoC.

https://rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/UBootA10FPGABoot

Below is the command to generate U boot in hex.

% arm-altera-eabi-objcopy -I binary -O ihex --adjust-vma -0x00000000 u-boot_w_dtb.bin hpsBootTarget.hex

[GregD]

Yes, I was using the steps in https://rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/UBootA10FPGABoot. The difference is that there is no longer a BSP editor in Intel SoC FPGA Embedded Development Suite v21.1. 

"As part of the continuous enhancement of tools flow, Arria10 SoC BSP Generator functionality is now merged into U-Boot flow. "

I did change #define CONFIG_SYS_TEXT_BASE 0xc0000000, compiled u-boot, and ran:

arm-altera-eabi-objcopy -I binary -O ihex --adjust-vma -0x00000000 u-boot-dtb.bin u-boot.hex

The boot-from-FPGA did not work with the sof generated using the u-boot.hex. My guess is there is some additional configuration needed in u-boot (or the Qsys project).

[EricMunYew_C_Intel]

You can enable the FPGA boot in Arria 10 GHRD and Qsys, and refer to below for the changes required.

And the boot loader u-boot-socfpga must be rebuilt again to generate u-boot_w_dtb.bin for boot from the FPGA.

https://rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/A10GSRD151FPGABoot

[cdelbegue]

Hi GregD,

Have you solved your issue and be able to integrate u-boot 2021.04 in a .sof to use the FPGA boot feature?

I am also interested in this feature, but I failed to build a working binary.

I already have a working u-boot with version 2014.10, and I am trying to migrate to version 2021.07.

I tried to transpose https://www.rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/A10GSRD151FPGABoot to u-boot 2021.07 without success :

1. Add the devicetree node:

	config {
		load-environment = <0>;
	};

2. Set the CONFIG_SPL_TEXT_BASE in the defconfig to 0xC0000000 (instead of setting the #define CONFIG_SYS_TEXT_BASE)

3. Edit the file arch/arm/mach-socfpga/board.c (instead of the file board/altera/socfpga_arria10/socfpga_common.c):

int board_init(void)
{
	/* Address of boot parameters for ATAG (if ATAG is used) */
	gd->bd->bi_boot_params = CONFIG_SYS_SDRAM_BASE + 0x100;

	/* Disable security / privilege in the A10 NOC to allow masters to write to FPGA OCM */
	writel(0x03fe0101, 0xFFD13500);
	//noc_fw_soc2fpga_soc2fpga_scr:lwsoc2fpga: Allow unsecured accesses from all masters When cleared (0) secure access only
	writel(0x03fe0101, 0xFFD13504);
	//noc_fw_soc2fpga_soc2fpga_scr:soc2fpga: Allow unsecured accesses from all masters When cleared (0) secure access only
	writel(0xffffffff, 0xFFD11004);
	//noc_l4_priv_l4_priv_filter: Allow all peripherals to accept non privileged accesses. (When cleared (0) only privileged access are allowed)

	return 0;
}

4. Convert the generated preloader image u-boot-with-spl.bin to Intel .hex format:

arm-poky-linux-gnueabi-objcopy -I binary -O ihex --adjust-vma -0x00000000 u-boot-with-spl.bin hpsBootTarget.hex

Any suggestions ?

Best regards,