PROCESSOR-SDK-AM62X: Questions about Debian SDK

Hi GR,

GR said:

I think TI providing Debian12 (bookworm), Is there any way to build  Debian11 (bullseye) ?

Debian "Bookworm" is out first TI release, and that's the only thing we offer/support at the moment. I'm not sure the effort to get Debian 11 to work but I suppose you could if you really wanted to, as all the build scripts for out AM62x Debian build are public. One issue might be the graphics driver as it has a hard dependency on a given Kernel version. I would recommend sticking to the official release.

GR said:

Is there any information about Gnome Desktop for AM625?

It is not included in the TI Debian distribution for AM62x. I was told if you'd try to add it, it would only work without graphics acceleration at this time. Acceleration would require desktop OpenGL support, which currently is not fully implemented/available (the GPU driver would need to go upstream first). So long story short, it might be of limited use (too slow).

GR said:

My customer want to run Linux on 2xA53 in AM6254. (for test 2 core performance in EVM)

On your AM62 system, you can isolate the CPU cores 2 and 3 from the Kernel scheduling, using a Kernel command line parameter of optargs='isolcpus=2-3'. You can add this parameter to the optargs ENV variable in U-Boot before starting your boot progress, like env set optargs 'isolcpus=2-3', and then checking the Kernel command line in the boot log to make sure this option got applied. You could also completely remove two cores from the Kernel device tree file, this should do the trick as well.

GR said:

If use Linux SBL for boot, we could edit SBL project for run Linux on only 2xA53?

And could we use Linux SBL for Debian?

You want to use SBL (from the MCU+ SDK) instead of U-Boot SPL, to load and run Debian? I have not tried this but I'm sure it can be made work. There's nothing special really about the Debian boot flow vs. our Yocto SDK Linux rootfs.

GR said:

If use Linux SPL, we could edit device tree for run Linux on only 2xA53?

Yes.

GR said:

And Is there any information or guide for debian?

What are you looking for exactly? Instructions how to modify the device tree in the Debian image? If it is just for testing purposes, you could copy the dtb file from the SD card image to your PC, reverse-compile it into a dts (source) file, modify it with a text editor, then compile it back into a dtb file and finally copy it back to your SD card. This E2E post here shows how to use the device tree compiler tool (dtc) to do that: https://e2e.ti.com/support/processors-group/processors/f/processors-forum/1266153/sk-am62-hypervisor-am62x-sk-evm/4809162#4809162

Regards, Andreas