NXP LS1046A RDB

Overview

The LS1046A reference design board (RDB) is a high-performance computing, evaluation, and development platform that supports the Layerscape LS1046A architecture processor. The LS1046ARDB board supports the Layerscape LS1046A processor and is optimized to support the DDR4 memory and a full complement of high-speed SerDes ports.

The Layerscape LS1046A processor integrates four 64-bit Arm(R) Cortex(R) A72 cores with packet processing acceleration and high-speed peripherals. The impressive performance of more than 32,000 CoreMarks, paired with 10 Gb Ethernet, PCIe Gen. 3, SATA 3.0, USB 3.0 and QSPI interfaces provides an excellent combination for a range of enterprise and service provider networking, storage, security and industrial applications.

Hardware

LS1046A RDB boards supports the following features:

  • Four 32/64-bit Arm(R) Cortex(R)V8 A72 CPUs, up to 1.6 GHz core speed

  • Supports 8 GB DDR4 SDRAM memory

  • SDHC port connects directly to an adapter card slot, featuring 4 GB eMMCi memory device

  • One 512 MB SLC NAND flash with ECC support (1.8 V)

  • CPLD connection: 8-bit registers in CPLD to configure mux/demux selections

  • Support two 64 MB onboard QSPI NOR flash memories

  • USB: - Two USB 3.0 controllers with integrated PHYs. - One USB1 3.0 port is connected to a Type A host connector. - One USB1 3.0 port is configured as On-The-Go (OTG) with a Micro-AB connector. - One USB2.0 is connected to miniPCIe connector .

  • Ethernet: - Supports SGMII 1G PHYs at Lane 2 and Lane 3 - Supports SFP+module with XFI retimers - Supports AQR106/107 10G PHY with XFI/2.5G SGMII

  • PCIe and SATA: - Mini PCIe express x1 (Gen1/2/3)card - Standard PCIe x1 (Gen1/2/3) card - Standard PCIe x1 (Gen1/2/3) card - One SATA 3.0 connector

Supported Features

NXP LS1046A RDB board default configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

GIC-400

on-chip

GICv2 interrupt controller

ARM TIMER

on-chip

System Clock

UART

on-chip

NS16550 compatible serial port

Other hardware features are not supported by the Zephyr kernel.

The default configuration can be found in the defconfig file for NON-SMP:

boards/arm64/nxp_ls1046ardb/nxp_ls1046ardb_defconfig

Or for SMP running on all four CPU Cores:

boards/arm64/nxp_ls1046ardb/nxp_ls1046ardb_smp_4cores_defconfig

Or for SMP running on 2 CPU Cores (Core2 and Core3):

boards/arm64/nxp_ls1046ardb/nxp_ls1046ardb_smp_2cores_defconfig

There are two serial port on the board: uart1 and uart2, Zephyr is using uart2 as serial console.

Programming and Debugging

Use the following configuration to run basic Zephyr applications and kernel tests on LS1046A RDB board. For example, with the Synchronization Sample:

  1. Non-SMP mode

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b nxp_ls1046ardb samples/synchronization
west build -t run

This will build an image with the synchronization sample app.

Use u-boot to load and kick Zephyr.bin to CPU Core0:

tftp c0000000 zephyr.bin; dcache off; dcache flush; icache flush; icache off; go  0xc0000000;

Or kick Zephyr.bin to any other CPU Cores, for example run Zephyr on Core3:

tftp c0000000 zephyr.bin; dcache off; dcache flush; icache flush; icache off; cpu 3 release 0xc0000000;

It will display the following console output:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build zephyr-v2.5.0-1922-g3265b69d47e7  ***
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
thread_b: Hello World from cpu 0 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
  1. SMP mode running on 4 CPU Cores

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b nxp_ls1046ardb_smp_4cores samples/synchronization
west build -t run

This will build an image with the synchronization sample app.

Use u-boot to load and kick Zephyr.bin to CPU Core0:

tftp c0000000 zephyr.bin; dcache off; dcache flush; icache flush; icache off; go  0xc0000000;

It will display the following console output:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build zephyr-v2.5.0-1922-g3265b69d47e7  ***
Secondary CPU core 1 (MPID:0x1) is up
Secondary CPU core 2 (MPID:0x2) is up
Secondary CPU core 3 (MPID:0x3) is up
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
thread_b: Hello World from cpu 1 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
  1. SMP mode running on 2 CPU Cores: Core2 and Core3

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b nxp_ls1046ardb_smp_2cores samples/synchronization
west build -t run

This will build an image with the synchronization sample app.

Use u-boot to load and kick Zephyr.bin to CPU Core2:

tftp c0000000 zephyr.bin; dcache off; dcache flush; icache flush; icache off; cpu 2 release 0xc0000000;

It will display the following console output:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build zephyr-v2.5.0-1922-g3265b69d47e7  ***
Secondary CPU core 1 (MPID:0x3) is up
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
thread_b: Hello World from cpu 1 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on nxp_ls1046ardb!
  1. Running Zephyr on Jailhouse inmate Cell

Use the following to run Zephyr in Jailhouse inmate, need to configure Jailhouse inmate Cell to use a single Core for Zephyr non-SMP mode, or use Core2 and Core3 for Zephyr SMP 2cores image.

  1. Use root Cell dts to boot root Cell Linux.

  2. Install Jailhouse module:

modprobe jailhouse
  1. Run Zephyr demo in inmate Cell:

jailhouse enable ls1046a-rdb.cell
jailhouse cell create ls1046a-rdb-inmate-demo.cell
jailhouse cell load 1 zephyr.bin --address 0xc0000000
jailhouse cell start 1

Flashing

Zephyr image can be loaded in DDR memory at address 0xc0000000 from SD Card, EMMC, QSPI Flash or downloaded from network in uboot.

Debugging

LS1046A RDB board includes one JTAG connector on board, connect it to CodeWarrior TAP for debugging.