freeRTOS for cortex-A7

Kernel
1

niti19 wrote on Wednesday, April 06, 2016:

Hello,

Currently I am using i.MUX6Ul evk board. I want to run RTOS on it. It is having cortex-A7 architecture. Does freeRTOS available for the same?
Thanks,
Niti

2

rtel wrote on Wednesday, April 06, 2016:

How easy this will be depends on the interrupt controller used. If its a standard ARM GIC then you can follow the information on this page:

http://www.freertos.org/Using-FreeRTOS-on-Cortex-A-Embedded-Processors.html

and you can use the Zynq demo as an example (doesn’t matter that the Zynq is A9 rather than A7):

http://www.freertos.org/RTOS-Xilinx-Zynq.html

If your chip has a proprietary interrupt controller then you can follow the information on this page:

http://www.freertos.org/Using-FreeRTOS-on-Cortex-A-proprietary-interrupt-controller.html

and use something like the SAMA5 demo as an example:

http://www.freertos.org/Atmel_SAMA5D3_Cortex-A5_IAR.html

3

Hi,
First of all I am a newbie to RTOSes. Sorry if i ask any silly questions.
I am using i.MX 7D SOM from toradex which has i.MX 7Dual Processors from NXP. I want to start development on it for Free RTOS to understand better and eventually develop a solution with it.
I want to understand the process of porting and running FreeRtos on my Hardware’s Cortex®-A7 core not cortex M core.
My final case could be a single core processor also in future.
Can anyone guide me how to proceed on this?

4

First, I am fairly sure there are ports based on the Cortex-A7 core that would be better starting points then a Cortex-M core. One big difference is that the Cortex-M cores had enough resources built into the core processor that one port could work as a baseline for an entire system of cores, but in the A series, some parts, like the timer and interrupt controller aren’t as bundled with the core, and so different A7 processors may need somewhat different port layers to handle those devices.

5

Can you please guide me to any port which will be a good starting point for me?

6

There are several official ports to Cortex-A9 and A7 chips. The A9 instructions are also relevant to A7 cores. The thing to watch out for is the interrupt controller - if it is a standard ARM GIC then you probably don’t need to do much, but many A7 chips have propitiatory interrupt controllers.: