ARM Cortex -A Series - Heriot-Watt University

1 Copyright 2011 2013 ARM. All rights DEN0013D (ID012214)ARM Cortex -A SeriesVersion: s Guide ARM DEN0013 DCopyright 2011 2013 ARM. All rights Cortex -A Series Programmer s GuideCopyright 2011 2013 ARM. All rights InformationThe following changes have been made to this NoticeThis Cortex -A Series Programmer s Guide is protected by copyright and the practice or implementation of the information herein may be protected by one or more patents or pending applications. No part of this Cortex -A Series Programmer s Guide may be reproduced in any form by any means without the express prior written permission of ARM. No license, express or implied, by estoppel or otherwise to any intellectual property rights is granted by this Cortex -A Series Programmer s access to the information in this Cortex -A Series Programmer s Guide is conditional upon your acceptance that you will not use or permit others to use the information for the purposes of determining whether implementations of the information herein infringe any third party patents.

2 This Cortex -A Series Programmer s Guide is provided as is . ARM makes no representations or warranties, either express or implied, included but not limited to, warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement, that the content of this Cortex -A Series Programmer s Guide is suitable for any particular purpose or that any practice or implementation of the contents of the Cortex -A Series Programmer s Guide will not infringe any third party patents, copyrights, trade secrets, or other Cortex -A Series Programmer s Guide may include technical inaccuracies or typographical the extent not prohibited by law, in no event will ARM be liable for any damages, including without limitation any direct loss, lost revenue.

3 Lost profits or data, special, indirect, consequential, incidental or punitive damages, however caused and regardless of the theory of liability, arising out of or related to any furnishing, practicing, modifying or any use of this Programmer s Guide, even if ARM has been advised of the possibility of such damages. The information provided herein is subject to export control laws, including the Export Administration Act and its associated regulations, and may be subject to export or import regulations in other countries. You agree to comply fully with all laws and regulations of the United States and other countries ( Export Laws ) to assure that neither the information herein, nor any direct products thereof are; (i) exported, directly or indirectly, in violation of Export Laws, either to any countries that are subject to export restrictions or to any end user who has been prohibited from participating in the export transactions by any federal agency of the government.

4 Or (ii) intended to be used for any purpose prohibited by Export Laws, including, without limitation, nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons and logos marked with or are registered trademarks or trademarks of ARM Limited, except as otherwise stated below in this proprietary notice. Other brands and names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective 2011 2013 ARM Limited, 110 Fulbourn Road Cambridge, CB1 9NJ, England Figure 1-1 on page 1-2 is supplied courtesy of The Centre for Computing History , document is Non-Confidential but any disclosure by you is subject to you providing notice to and the acceptance by the recipient of, the conditions set out this document, where the term ARM is used to refer to the company it means ARM or any of its subsidiaries as appropriate.

5 Web historyDateIssueConfidentialityChange25 March 2011 ANon-ConfidentialFirst release10 August 2011 BNon-ConfidentialSecond release. Updated to include Virtualization, Cortex -A15 processor, and LPAE. Corrected and revised throughout25 June 2012 CNon-ConfidentialUpdated to include Cortex -A7 processor, and Index added. Corrected and revised January 2014 DNon-ConfidentialUpdated to include Cortex -A12 processor, Cache Coherent Interconnect, expanded GIC coverage, Multi-core processors, Corrected and revised DEN0013 DCopyright 2011 2013 ARM. All rights Cortex -A Series Programmer s GuidePrefacePreface to the 4th Edition .. ixGlossary .. xTypographical conventions .. xivFeedback on this book.

6 XvReferences .. xviChapter .. (SoC) .. systems .. 1-5 Chapter 2 ARM Architecture and profiles .. history and extensions .. properties .. Series processors .. architectural points of ARM Cortex -A Series processors .. 2-16 Chapter 3 ARM Processor Modes and .. 3-6 Chapter 4 Introduction to Assembly with other assembly languages .. ARM instruction sets .. to the GNU Assembler .. tools assembly language .. 4-11 ContentsARM DEN0013 DCopyright 2011 2013 ARM. All rights assembly code .. with ARMv8-A .. 4-13 Chapter 5 ARM/Thumb Unified Assembly Language set basics .. processing operations .. instructions .. arithmetic .. instructions.

7 5-17 Chapter basics and the IEEE-754 standard .. support in GCC .. support in the ARM Compiler .. support in Linux .. optimization .. 6-11 Chapter 7 Introducing .. architecture overview .. C Compiler and assembler .. 7-11 Chapter do caches help? .. drawbacks .. hierarchy .. architecture .. policies .. and Fetch buffers .. performance and hit rate .. and cleaning cache memory .. of coherency and unification .. 2 cache controller .. and ECC in caches .. 8-23 Chapter 9 The Memory Management memory .. Translation Lookaside Buffer .. of page sizes .. level address translation .. 2 translation tables .. attributes.

8 And OS usage of translation tables .. 9-17 Chapter 10 Memory memory ordering model .. barriers .. coherency implications .. 10-11 Chapter 11 Exception of exception .. priorities .. handling .. exception handlers .. exception program flow .. 11-14 ContentsARM DEN0013 DCopyright 2011 2013 ARM. All rights 12 Interrupt interrupt requests .. Generic Interrupt Controller .. 12-7 Chapter 13 Boot a bare-metal system .. Linux .. 13-7 Chapter .. C porting issues .. ARM assembly code to ARMv7-A .. ARM code to Thumb .. 14-11 Chapter 15 Application Binary Call Standard .. C and assembly code .. 15-8 Chapter output .. 16-3 Chapter 17 Optimizing Code to Run on ARM optimizations.

9 Memory system optimization .. code modifications .. 17-12 Chapter 18 Multi-core ARM systems .. multi-processing .. multi-processing .. multi-processing .. coherency .. and cache maintenance broadcast .. interrupts in an SMP system .. accesses .. SMP systems .. memory region .. 18-19 Chapter 19 Parallelizing s law .. methods .. models .. libraries .. issues .. mechanisms in the Linux kernel .. in SMP systems .. 19-13 Chapter 20 Power management .. Voltage and Frequency Scaling .. language power instructions .. State Coordination Interface .. 20-9 Chapter hardware architecture .. 21-2 ContentsARM DEN0013 DCopyright 2011 2013 ARM.

10 All rights Virtualization Extensions .. software .. between virtualization and ARM Security Extensions .. Physical Address Extensions .. 22-10 Chapter of a system .. execution models in .. MP .. 23-10 Chapter debug hardware .. trace hardware .. monitor .. Linux applications .. debug and trace .. 24-10 Appendix AInstruction Summary .. A-2 Appendix BTools, Operating Systems and distributions .. tools .. toolchains for ARM processors .. DS-5 .. platforms .. B-12 Appendix CBuilding Linux for ARM the Linux kernel .. the Linux filesystem .. it together .. C-8 ARM DEN0013 DCopyright 2011 2013 ARM. All rights is estimated that the number of mobile phones in the world will exceed the human population sometime in 2014.