AM62P: AM62P SBL with GD25F64 Flash，The mirror loading speed is slow.

zhang you

Part Number: AM62P

Tool/software:

Hello:

We Use AM62P 10.0.0 SDK, and modify the flash to GD25F64. But The mirror loading speed is slow.

When comparing the logs with the development board, we found that in terms of mirror loading, our board takes many times longer than the development board.

During the debugging of the GD25F64 Flash in SBL, we encountered a failure in image verification. To resolve this, we had to manually copy the image from the Flash to the DDR for the verification to pass.

I found that the part of our board that takes longer to load images than the development board is mainly the time it takes to manually copy images from Flash to DDR

I have several questions here and hope they can be answered:

1、On which core does the TIFS of AM62P run? Why does TIFS boot images from flash to DDR

2、Why does the image verification fail in Flash after we switch to GD25F64 Flash chip? We need to manually copy the image to DDR before the verification can pass

3、In the 10.1.0 SDK version, we found that modifications were made here. Do you want to know what considerations are behind this

2 months ago

0 Andreas Dannenberg 2 months ago

TI__Guru 69652 points

Re-assigning this thread to the appropriate expert.... Stay tuned.

0 Vaibhav Kumar 2 months ago

TI__Mastermind 45486 points

Hi Zhang,

zhang you said:
The mirror loading speed is slow.

Before answering your questions, can you help clarify what is mirror loading?

zhang you said:
3、In the 10.1.0 SDK version, we found that modifications were made here. Do you want to know what considerations are behind this

Let me check these differences between 10.0 and 10.1 so that I have more context on the changes.

Meanwhile, you can go ahead and explain what mirror loading is.

Regards,

Vaibhav

0 zhang you 2 months ago in reply to Vaibhav Kumar

Prodigy 40 points

Hello:

The mirror loading is:

For example, in Boot Stage 1, the file "sbl_ospi_linux_stage2.release.appimage.hs_fs" will be copied from the Flash to the address 0x84000000 in DDR. Then, it will be copied from address 0x84000000 to the specific runtime address.

0 Prashant Shivhare 2 months ago in reply to zhang you

TI__Guru 70231 points

Hello,

There have been known authentication failures from TIFS for NOR boot media. The SDK requests the TIFS to authenticate the image directly from NOR flash by configuring it in DAC mode. There may be cases where the NOR flash part may not meet the throughput expected from the cryto accelerator while reading the image.

So, starting SDK v11.0, a mechanism is added to first read the image to DDR from NOR and then request authentication in case the authentication fails directly from flash.

In case it helps, here is the commit that introduces the mechanism:

am62x/am62px/am62dx: bootloader: Use ddr copy for ospi nor · TexasInstruments/mcupsdk-core-k3@3ed9136

0 zhang you 2 months ago in reply to Prashant Shivhare

Prodigy 40 points

Hi:

May I ask another question: On which core does TIFS run, and at what stage is it loaded?

Thanks !!!

0 Prashant Shivhare 2 months ago in reply to zhang you

TI__Guru 70231 points

zhang you said:
On which core does TIFS run, and at what stage is it loaded?

The TIFS runs on a core inside the Secure Management Subsystem (SMS). It is loaded by the ROM as part of booting the SBL Stage1.

+1 Prashant Shivhare 2 months ago in reply to Prashant Shivhare

TI__Guru 70231 points

For the authentication failure from the flash itself, you may once try the TIFS v11.0 from the SDK v11.0. This TIFS version increased the timeout for the completion of DMA transactions from the flash thus relaxing the throughput requirement somewhat.

If this also doesn't work then you would have to stick with the procedure of loading the image into DDR and then authenticating it.

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AM62P: AM62P SBL with GD25F64 Flash，The mirror loading speed is slow.