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authorAndré Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu>2015-08-05 17:04:01 -0300
committerAndré Fabian Silva Delgado <emulatorman@parabola.nu>2015-08-05 17:04:01 -0300
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+ARM TCM (Tightly-Coupled Memory) handling in Linux
+----
+Written by Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@stericsson.com>
+
+Some ARM SoC:s have a so-called TCM (Tightly-Coupled Memory).
+This is usually just a few (4-64) KiB of RAM inside the ARM
+processor.
+
+Due to being embedded inside the CPU The TCM has a
+Harvard-architecture, so there is an ITCM (instruction TCM)
+and a DTCM (data TCM). The DTCM can not contain any
+instructions, but the ITCM can actually contain data.
+The size of DTCM or ITCM is minimum 4KiB so the typical
+minimum configuration is 4KiB ITCM and 4KiB DTCM.
+
+ARM CPU:s have special registers to read out status, physical
+location and size of TCM memories. arch/arm/include/asm/cputype.h
+defines a CPUID_TCM register that you can read out from the
+system control coprocessor. Documentation from ARM can be found
+at http://infocenter.arm.com, search for "TCM Status Register"
+to see documents for all CPUs. Reading this register you can
+determine if ITCM (bits 1-0) and/or DTCM (bit 17-16) is present
+in the machine.
+
+There is further a TCM region register (search for "TCM Region
+Registers" at the ARM site) that can report and modify the location
+size of TCM memories at runtime. This is used to read out and modify
+TCM location and size. Notice that this is not a MMU table: you
+actually move the physical location of the TCM around. At the
+place you put it, it will mask any underlying RAM from the
+CPU so it is usually wise not to overlap any physical RAM with
+the TCM.
+
+The TCM memory can then be remapped to another address again using
+the MMU, but notice that the TCM if often used in situations where
+the MMU is turned off. To avoid confusion the current Linux
+implementation will map the TCM 1 to 1 from physical to virtual
+memory in the location specified by the kernel. Currently Linux
+will map ITCM to 0xfffe0000 and on, and DTCM to 0xfffe8000 and
+on, supporting a maximum of 32KiB of ITCM and 32KiB of DTCM.
+
+Newer versions of the region registers also support dividing these
+TCMs in two separate banks, so for example an 8KiB ITCM is divided
+into two 4KiB banks with its own control registers. The idea is to
+be able to lock and hide one of the banks for use by the secure
+world (TrustZone).
+
+TCM is used for a few things:
+
+- FIQ and other interrupt handlers that need deterministic
+ timing and cannot wait for cache misses.
+
+- Idle loops where all external RAM is set to self-refresh
+ retention mode, so only on-chip RAM is accessible by
+ the CPU and then we hang inside ITCM waiting for an
+ interrupt.
+
+- Other operations which implies shutting off or reconfiguring
+ the external RAM controller.
+
+There is an interface for using TCM on the ARM architecture
+in <asm/tcm.h>. Using this interface it is possible to:
+
+- Define the physical address and size of ITCM and DTCM.
+
+- Tag functions to be compiled into ITCM.
+
+- Tag data and constants to be allocated to DTCM and ITCM.
+
+- Have the remaining TCM RAM added to a special
+ allocation pool with gen_pool_create() and gen_pool_add()
+ and provice tcm_alloc() and tcm_free() for this
+ memory. Such a heap is great for things like saving
+ device state when shutting off device power domains.
+
+A machine that has TCM memory shall select HAVE_TCM from
+arch/arm/Kconfig for itself. Code that needs to use TCM shall
+#include <asm/tcm.h>
+
+Functions to go into itcm can be tagged like this:
+int __tcmfunc foo(int bar);
+
+Since these are marked to become long_calls and you may want
+to have functions called locally inside the TCM without
+wasting space, there is also the __tcmlocalfunc prefix that
+will make the call relative.
+
+Variables to go into dtcm can be tagged like this:
+int __tcmdata foo;
+
+Constants can be tagged like this:
+int __tcmconst foo;
+
+To put assembler into TCM just use
+.section ".tcm.text" or .section ".tcm.data"
+respectively.
+
+Example code:
+
+#include <asm/tcm.h>
+
+/* Uninitialized data */
+static u32 __tcmdata tcmvar;
+/* Initialized data */
+static u32 __tcmdata tcmassigned = 0x2BADBABEU;
+/* Constant */
+static const u32 __tcmconst tcmconst = 0xCAFEBABEU;
+
+static void __tcmlocalfunc tcm_to_tcm(void)
+{
+ int i;
+ for (i = 0; i < 100; i++)
+ tcmvar ++;
+}
+
+static void __tcmfunc hello_tcm(void)
+{
+ /* Some abstract code that runs in ITCM */
+ int i;
+ for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
+ tcmvar ++;
+ }
+ tcm_to_tcm();
+}
+
+static void __init test_tcm(void)
+{
+ u32 *tcmem;
+ int i;
+
+ hello_tcm();
+ printk("Hello TCM executed from ITCM RAM\n");
+
+ printk("TCM variable from testrun: %u @ %p\n", tcmvar, &tcmvar);
+ tcmvar = 0xDEADBEEFU;
+ printk("TCM variable: 0x%x @ %p\n", tcmvar, &tcmvar);
+
+ printk("TCM assigned variable: 0x%x @ %p\n", tcmassigned, &tcmassigned);
+
+ printk("TCM constant: 0x%x @ %p\n", tcmconst, &tcmconst);
+
+ /* Allocate some TCM memory from the pool */
+ tcmem = tcm_alloc(20);
+ if (tcmem) {
+ printk("TCM Allocated 20 bytes of TCM @ %p\n", tcmem);
+ tcmem[0] = 0xDEADBEEFU;
+ tcmem[1] = 0x2BADBABEU;
+ tcmem[2] = 0xCAFEBABEU;
+ tcmem[3] = 0xDEADBEEFU;
+ tcmem[4] = 0x2BADBABEU;
+ for (i = 0; i < 5; i++)
+ printk("TCM tcmem[%d] = %08x\n", i, tcmem[i]);
+ tcm_free(tcmem, 20);
+ }
+}