Arm Cortex-A7

Applicable for

STM32MP13x lines, STM32MP15x lines

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1 Article purpose

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

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

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

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

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

3.1 Boot time

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

3.2.1 Overview

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

Domain	Peripheral	Software components			Comment
		OP-TEE	Linux	STM32Cube
Ecosystem	Cortex-A7	OP-TEE	Linux

3.2.3 Peripheral configuration

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

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

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