[Qemu-devel] QEMU ARM Cortex-A9 emulation boards
Hi all, I'm leading a project that aims to emulates a hardware that uses an Arm Cortex A9 processor. I though that talking with you could help me to set our directions to join efforts and with some luck we could contribute with something on QEMU. If someone could give some directions on this I'll appreciate. So, this hardware we intend to emulate doesn't need to use any specific SoC. The only requirement is that it must use an Arm Cortex A9 core. Is the Cortex-A9 core fully implemented in QEMU? My first idea was to use the xilinx board (may realview-pbx-a9 or vexpress-a9) because it already uses the Arm Cortex A9 processor but Im not sure if they supports graphical display. Do they? Then, I thought that we could write an OMAP4 implementation based on the already existing OMAP3 SoC as it is better organized, cleaner and has more functionality than the boards I mentioned before but I'm afraid that this could be much harder then just adding the graphical parts to some of the existing ones. May be it would be possible to use OMAP3 just with a few tweaks so we could pass a cortex-A9 in spite of the actual cores, is that possible? I have worked with QEMU before but never have wrote a board machine from the scratch. In the case that we decide to do the OMAP4+panda emulation, what would be some logical steps to make the thinks working? Kind Regards, Erlon Cruz
Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU ARM Cortex-A9 emulation boards
On 29 May 2013 15:24, Erlon Cruz wrote: > So, this hardware we intend to emulate doesn't need to use > any specific SoC. This doesn't make sense. If it's hardware it must be using *some* SoC or system board or PCI interface or similar. It doesn't just float around in a vacuum. > The only > requirement is that it must use an Arm Cortex A9 core. Is > the Cortex-A9 core fully implemented in QEMU? More or less, yes (we have some notable missing bits like TrustZone support but typically they are not a problem). > My first idea was to use the xilinx board (may realview-pbx-a9 > or vexpress-a9) because it already uses the Arm Cortex A9 > processor These are all actual models of actual hardware -- is the device you want to emulate present on the real boards? > but Im not sure if they supports graphical display. Do they? the realview and vexpress boards do. Don't know about xilinx. > Then, I thought that we could write an OMAP4 implementation > based on the already existing OMAP3 SoC An OMAP4 emulation would be a colossal undertaking (probably about 10,000 lines of code). It would be a project all by itself. > May be it would be possible to use OMAP3 just with a few > tweaks so we could pass a cortex-A9 in spite of the actual > cores, is that possible? No, because the OMAP3 is not an A9 SoC. (Also, the OMAP3 support is not yet in upstream QEMU). thanks -- PMM
