Arm Cortex-A7

Revision as of 17:03, 4 November 2021 by Registered User (Peripheral overview)

1 Article purpose[edit]

The purpose of this article is to:

  • briefly introduce the Arm® Cortex®-A7 core and its main features
  • indicate the level of security supported by this processor

2 Peripheral overview[edit]

The Arm Cortex-A7 can be instantiated several times into a single cluster:

  • The STM32MP13 main processor is a Cortex-A7 cluster embedding a single core.
  • The STM32MP15 main processor is a Cortex-A7 cluster embedding one or two core(s), depending on the selected line.

2.1 Features[edit]

The Cortex-A7 is a 32-bit processor that belongs to ARMv7-VE architecture family. ARMv7-VE corresponds to the ARMv7-A architecture, with virtual extensions. Among a wide range of features, it includes a memory management unit (MMU), a separate L1 cache and a unified L2 cache in order to efficiently support rich operating systems such as Linux, with a high level of performance.

Refer to the STM32MP13 reference manuals or the STM32MP15 reference manuals for the complete list of features.

2.2 Security support[edit]

The Cortex-A7 supports a non-secure and a secure modes that define two hardware execution contexts, named Cortex-A7 non-secure and Cortex-A7 secure.

3 Peripheral usage and associated software[edit]

All the software components executed by the Cortex-A7, at boot time and at runtime, constitute the OpenSTLinux distribution.

3.1 Boot time[edit]

As soon as the STM32MP1 is powered up, the Cortex-A7 starts to execute the ROM code, which is the first stage of the boot chain. It then executes the FSBL TF-A in secure mode before jumping to the SSBL U-Boot in non-secure mode.

3.2 Runtime[edit]

3.2.1 Overview[edit]

The Cortex-A7 runs Linux in non-secure mode and OP-TEE in secure mode. Linux is executed in SMP mode on the dual-core versions, as explained in the above.

3.2.2 Software frameworks[edit]

Internal peripherals software table template

| Ecosystem
|  Cortex-A7
|  OP-TEE
|  Linux
| 
|
|-
|}

3.2.3 Peripheral configuration[edit]

The Cortex-A7 configuration is done by the various components running on it, according to build-time parameters, and also information from the device tree.

3.2.4 Peripheral assignment[edit]

The Cortex-A7 is the main processor supporting Cortex-A7 secure and Cortex-A7 non-secure contexts. It therefore cannot be assigned but, it manages all the peripherals assigned to those contexts.

4 How to go further[edit]

Refer to Arm website[1] for more detailed information on this core.

5 References[edit]