Changelog & Release Notes

Release 5.0 - InterVM Communication with Linux Containers

New Features

• Provided static shared memory in Xen hypervisor allowing users to statically set up shared memory on a dom0less system, enabling domains to do shm-based communication

• Provided static event channel established in Xen hypervisor for event notification between two domains

• Implemented Inter-VM communication using RPMsg protocol provided by the OpenAMP framework together with the static shared memory and static event channel provided by Xen hypervisor

• Added docker support in the Linux domain, showing standard application deployments via containers

• Added a docker container hosted Nginx web server to serve data for external users visiting through the HTTP protocol

• Added Yocto testimage support

• Added test suite that can validate the functionalities in Baremetal Zephyr

• Enhanced the test suite to validate Baremetal Linux and Virtualization stack

Changed

• Upgraded to FVP version 11.20.15

• Upgraded Yocto to langdale

• Upgraded to U-Boot 2022.07

• Upgraded to Xen 4.17

• Upgraded to Zephyr 3.2.0

• Upgraded to Linux kernel 5.19

• Enabled CONFIG_XEN options for Linux domain to add Xen kernel support

• Changed to use the meta-zephyr Yocto layer to build Zephyr applications

  URL: https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-zephyr
  layers: meta-zephyr-core
  branch: langdale
  revision: 375aea434ef214a5022e0a3e54fcae3e5e965c9b
  

• Introduced the meta-openamp Yocto layer to build libmetal and OpenAMP libraries

  URL: https://github.com/OpenAMP/meta-openamp
  layers: meta-openamp
  |inclusivity-exception| branch: master
  revision: cd5cc9274321ea9d808a7800cfcba26320cf53a5
  

• Other third-party Yocto layers used to build the Software Stack:

  URL: https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
  layers: meta, meta-poky
  branch: langdale
  revision: a3e3b740e140d036122f7b11e2ac452bda548444
  
  URL: https://git.openembedded.org/meta-openembedded
  layers: meta-filesystems, meta-networking, meta-oe, meta-python
  branch: langdale
  revision: c354f92778c1d4bcd3680af7e0fb0d1414de2344
  
  URL: https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/meta-virtualization
  layers: meta-virtualization
  branch: langdale
  revision: 8857b36ebfec3d548755755b009adc491ef320ab
  
  URL: https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/meta-arm
  layers: meta-arm, meta-arm-bsp, meta-arm-toolchain
  branch: langdale
  revision: 025124814e8676e46d42ec5b07220283f1bdbcd0
  

Known Issues and Limitations

• Xen shared-memory does not support xen,offset yet, which is introduced in the Linux documentation at Xen hypervisor reserved-memory binding

• The below feature for Xen static shared memory device node “xen,shared-mem” is not implemented yet:

  Host physical address is optional, when missing Xen decides the location

• The limitations of RPMsg Demo mentioned in Limitations and Improvements

• The bp.refcounter.use_real_time model parameter is not supported for the hypervisor and baremetal Zephyr use cases

• Issues and limitations mentioned in Known Issues and Limitations of Release 2

Release 4.0 - Xen

New Features

• Added ability to boot one Linux and one Zephyr domain on Xen in dom0less mode

• Added ability to boot three Zephyr sample applications

• Added basic Linux test suite using BATS

Changed

• A new Yocto layer has been created called meta-armv8r64-extras, which extends meta-arm-bsp with additional use cases

• Moved documentation to the new repository and expanded to cover new use cases. It is now published on ReadTheDocs

• Upgraded to FVP version 11.18.16

• Upgraded to U-Boot 2022.01 and enabled support for applying device tree overlays

• Upgraded to Linux kernel 5.15

• Added support to boot-wrapper-aarch64 for S-EL2 SMP payloads such as Xen

• Amended the device tree to support the virtio random number generator

• Added ssh-pregen-hostkeys to the default image to improve boot times

• Amended the default model parameters to support enabling cache_state_modelled

• Removed support for PREEMPT_RT Linux kernel builds

• Third-party Yocto layers used to build the Software Stack:

  URL: https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
  layers: meta, meta-poky
  branch: kirkstone
  revision: 0c3b92901cedab926f313a2b783ff2e8833c95cf
  
  URL: https://git.openembedded.org/meta-openembedded
  layers: meta-filesystems, meta-networking, meta-oe, meta-python
  branch: kirkstone
  revision: fcc7d7eae82be4c180f2e8fa3db90a8ab3be07b7
  
  URL: https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/meta-virtualization
  layers: meta-virtualization
  branch: kirkstone
  revision: 0d35c194351a9672d18bff52a8f2fbabcd5b0f3d
  
  URL: https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/meta-arm
  layers: meta-arm, meta-arm-bsp, meta-arm-toolchain
  branch: kirkstone
  revision: 32ca791aaa6634e90a7c6ea3994189ef10a7ac90
  

Known Issues and Limitations

• The bp.refcounter.use_real_time model parameter is not supported for the hypervisor and baremetal Zephyr use cases

• “Dom0less” is a new set of features for Xen, some of which are still being developed in the Xen community. In this case, a “dom0less” domain running Linux cannot enable the CONFIG_XEN option, which will cause some limitations. For example, Linux can’t detect that it is running inside a Xen domain, so some Xen domain platform-specific Power Management control paths will not be invoked. One of the specific cases is that using the command echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/online to power off the Linux domain’s vcpu0 is invalid.

• Issues and limitations mentioned in Known Issues and Limitations of Release 2

Release 3 - UEFI

Release Note

https://community.arm.com/oss-platforms/w/docs/638/release-3—uefi

New Features

• Added U-Boot v2021.07 for UEFI support

• Updated boot-wrapper-aarch64 revision and added support for booting U-Boot

• Included boot-wrapper-aarch64 PSCI services in /memreserve/ region

Changed

• Configured the FVP to use the default RAM size of 4 Gb

• Added virtio_net User Networking mode by default and removed instructions about tap networking setup

• Updated Linux kernel version from 5.10 to 5.14 for both standard and Real-Time (PREEMPT_RT) builds

• Fixed the counter frequency initialization in boot-wrapper-aarch64

• Fixed PL011 and SP805 register sizes in the device tree

Known Issues and Limitations

• Device DMA memory cache-coherence issue: the FVP cache_state_modelled parameter will affect the cache coherence behavior of peripherals’ DMA. When users set cache_state_modelled=1, they also have to set cci400.force_on_from_start=1 to force the FVP to enable snooping on upstream ports

• Issues and limitations mentioned in Known Issues and Limitations of Release 2

Release 2 - SMP

Release Note

https://community.arm.com/oss-platforms/w/docs/634/release-2—smp

New Features

• Enabled SMP support via boot-wrapper-aarch64 providing the PSCI CPU_ON and CPU_OFF functions

• Introduced Armv8-R64 compiler flags

• Added Linux PREEMPT_RT support via linux-yocto-rt-5.10

• Added support for file sharing with the host machine using Virtio P9

• Added support for runfvp

• Added performance event support (PMU) in the Linux device tree

Changed

None.

Known Issues and Limitations

• Only PSCI CPU_ON and CPU_OFF functions are supported

• Linux kernel does not support booting from secure EL2 on Armv8-R AArch64

• Linux KVM does not support Armv8-R AArch64

Release 1 - Single Core

Release Note

https://community.arm.com/oss-platforms/w/docs/633/release-1-single-core

New Features

Introduced fvp-baser-aemv8r64 as a Yocto machine support the following BSP components on the Yocto hardknott release branch, where a standard Linux kernel can be built and run:

• boot-wrapper-aarch64

• Linux kernel: linux-yocto-5.10

Changed

Initial version.

Known Issues and Limitations

• Only support one CPU since SMP is not functional in boot-wrapper-aarch64 yet