1. Article purpose[edit source]
This article gives an example of high-rate transfers of data chunks from the Arm® Cortex®-M core to the Arm® Cortex®-A core.
2. Introduction[edit source]
Relying on a logic analyzer sample, this article describes the mechanism and the software implemented to perform high-rate transfers. In this example, the Cortex-M core is used to perform continuously:
- real-time operations
- simple data algorithm
- copy of the resulting data flow to DDR buffers, or RPMSG buffers, depending on the frequency sampling.
Copy transfer to DDR implementation requires :
- contiguous memory allocation in DDR memory
- Cortex-M awareness of the physical address and size of the memory buffers
- mmaping of buffers to enable Linux® user land application access to them.
A specific Linux driver, rpmsg_sdb (shared data buffer), has been developed to take care of such constraints.
For details on the buffer exchange mechanisms, refer to the how to exchange large data buffers with the coprocessor - principle article.
3. Example of context description[edit source]
Let us implement a logic analyzer running on the STM32MP1 discovery kit.
From the user interface, press the START button to start the logic analyzer sampling. The logic analyzer samples GPIO PORT E bits 8 to 14, which are present on the Arduino connector. They correspond to 7 bits. The 8th bit will be reset by M4 algorithm.
The number of received data is displayed on the screen in bytes and Mega bytes.
4. Example of static architecture for exchanging large data buffers[edit source]
The example of large data buffer exchange includes:
- A Cortex-M firmware
- A Linux user land application
- A Linux rpmsg_sdb (shared data buffer) driver
- A Linux rpmsg_tty driver
In the figure above, the numbers indicate the chronological order of data flows.
5. Cortex-M firmware[edit source]
The Cortex-M firmware is responsible for:
- receiving a command giving of the number of DDR buffers through the TTY RPMsg channel, from the Linux application
- receiving messages containing the physical address and size of DDR buffer(s), from the Linux rpmsg_sdb driver
- receiving a command Start/Stop sampling (including sampling frequency) through the TTY RPMsg channel, from the Linux application
- On start request:
- sampling the data at the requested sampling frequency
- filtering and packing data
- masking and transferring data to Linux application
- thanks to copy to DDR buffer by packet of 1024 bytes, if the frequency sampling is more than 5MHz, and informing the Cortex-A user interface (through the SDB RPMsg channel) when a DDR buffer of 1 Mbyte is filled, and roll to next DDR buffer.
- thanks to virtual UART over RPMSG buffer by packet of 256 bytes if the frequency is less or equal to 5MHz
6. Linux user land application[edit source]
The Cortex-A Linux application includes a GTK user interface.
It allows controlling:
- the sampling frequency
- the start / stop of the sampling.
The user interface displays statistics, including:
- the number of data received by the user interface, in bytes and Mega bytes
7. Linux drivers[edit source]
- The rpmsg_sdb Linux driver is responsible for the shared buffer management.
- The rpmsg_tty driver is used to communicate (transport commands and status/events) between the Cortex-M firmware and the Cortex-A user land application.
8. Dynamic view[edit source]
At startup, the Linux application performs the following actions:
- It loads the rpmsg_sdb.ko module.
- It loads the Cortex-M firmware, then starts it.
- It opens the rpmsg_tty driver for Cortex-M firmware control.
- It opens the rpmsg_sdb driver, then uses rpmsg_sdb IOCTL interface to allocate and mmap 10 buffers of 1Mbyte in DDR memory.
When the START button is pressed, the application sends the sampling command to the Cortex-M firmware (including the sampling frequency).
When the STOP button is pressed, the application sends the stop command to the Cortex-M firmware.
When the Cortex-M firmware sends a "buffer full" signal via the rpmsg_sdb driver, the application updates the statistic information.
9. Results[edit source]
The Cortex-M CPU is able to mask and copy data data at a rate up to 12Mbytes per second. This corresponds to the maximum rate that can be achieved.
10. Limitation[edit source]
The limitation is due to data masking- and copying, as shown in the figure below:
On this oscilloscope snapshot, a GPIO is set at the beginning of the data masking and copying algorithm, and reset at the end of the algorithm. So, 75.5 µs are spent to mask and copy 1024 bytes of data.
11. Source code[edit source]
The source code corresponding to this use case is available as a Yocto layer at:
The firmware is included in the Yocto layer as an .elf file.
The source code of the Cortex-M firmware is available at:
For firmware compilation, please have a look into: Developer Package for STM32CubeMP1
In the source code example, 10 buffers of 1MByte each are allocated for the exchange, which is enough to guarantee the real time behavior of the application. However, if the number of buffers or the size of these buffers need to be modified, then the Cortex-A application must be modified.
12. Usage[edit source]
Please follow README.md of Yocto layer to perform installation.
The logicanalyser application is launched/stopped by pressing User2 button of the STM32MP1 Discovery board.
Select the sampling frequency and click on Start to start the use case.
Snapshot view of user interface :
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