RTOS/AM3357: Heap configuration in GCC build

Pawel Krezolek

Part Number: AM3357
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: SYSBIOS

Tool/software: TI-RTOS

Hello,

I work on project with linux/gcc build of sysbios for Sitara.
Recently I had to increase heap size to 24MB and noticed that heap region is included in binary, so it also grown above 24MB.

Toolchain I use: arm-none-eabi-gcc (4.8.4-1+11-1) 4.8.4 20141219 (release)

This is my heap configuration:

var mainHeap = HeapMem.create()
mainHeap.size = 25165824;
mainHeap.sectionName = ".biosheap";
Memory.defaultHeapInstance = mainHeap;

Program.sectMap[".c_int00"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".c_int00"].loadAddress = 0x80000000;
Program.sectMap[".c_int00"].runAddress = 0x80000000;

Program.sectMap[".biosheap"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".biosheap"].runSegment = "DDR2"
Program.sectMap[".biosheap"].type = "NOLOAD";

it results in linker.cmd section:

.biosheap (NOLOAD) : {*(.biosheap)}  > DDR2

objdump shows:

                    Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
.biosheap     01800000  80027040  80027040  00037040  2**3
                    ALLOC
.bss             0002f748   81863930  81863930  0187392c  2**3
                    ALLOC

size output:
text data bss dec hex
231373 44892 25507656 25783921 1896e71

resulting binary size: 25573676

It looks like section type "NOLOAD" is ignored. Changing it to "DSECT" also does not help.

Can anyone help me with this issue?

Thanks in advance!

over 7 years ago

0 Biser Gatchev-XID over 7 years ago

TI__Guru**** 393215 points

The RTOS team have been notified. They will respond here.

0 Rahul Prabhu over 7 years ago

TI__Guru** 116020 points

It appears that you are running into the same issue that is being discussed here:
e2e.ti.com/.../604616

You can try the my recommendation or the work around by Robert (thread originator) on that thread.

Regards,
Rahul

0 Pawel Krezolek over 7 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Prodigy 40 points

Solution in this post is pretty much the same as my .cfg file, except that instead of "NOINIT" heap section type, there is "NOLOAD".

I understood, that it should work well on gcc, but it isn't. Also workaround did not help. It caused expansion of stack section instead of dedicated heap section, and this big stack section is not removed by objcopy, even with "--remove-section .stack" argument.

Before starting this thread I tried also to remove my .biosheap section in the same way as in this workaround, using objcopy, and it failed.

It seems that something prevents objcopy from removing section containing heap.

0 Rahul Prabhu over 7 years ago in reply to Pawel Krezolek

TI__Guru** 116020 points

Can you try the following :

Program.sectionsExclude = ".stack"

Program.sectionsExclude = ".heap"

0 Pawel Krezolek over 7 years ago in reply to Rahul Prabhu

Prodigy 40 points

I found the cause and solution of this behavior. It was hard to notice, because in single objcopy call I was removing heap section and converting from elf to binary.

When I split it into 2 steps, I noticed, that heap section has been removed. So objcopy worked properly, but still binary size was big, like it'd still contain removed section.

My sections configuration in .cfg file looked like that:

Program.sectMap[".c_int00"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".c_int00"].loadAddress = 0x80000000;
Program.sectMap[".c_int00"].runAddress = 0x80000000;
Program.sectMap[".nonCachedRAM"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".nonCachedRAM"].loadSegment = "OCMC_SRAM";

Program.sectMap[".xAltera"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".xAltera"].loadSegment = "ALTERA_MEM";
Program.sectMap[".xAltera"].type = "NOLOAD";

Program.sectMap[".stack"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".stack"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".rodata"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".rodata"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".neardata"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".neardata"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".biosheap"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".biosheap"].loadSegment = "DDR2";
Program.sectMap[".biosheap"].type = "NOLOAD";


Program.sectMap["ti.sysbios.family.arm.a8.mmuTableSection"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap["ti.sysbios.family.arm.a8.mmuTableSection"].loadSegment = "SRAM_HI";
Program.sectMap["ti.sysbios.family.arm.a8.mmuTableSection"].type = "NOLOAD";

Which resulted in following elf sections:

Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
  0 .c_int00      000000b4  80000000  80000000  00010000  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
  1 .stack        00020000  800000b8  800000b8  000100b4  2**3
                  ALLOC
  2 .rodata       00006e39  800200b8  800200b8  000300b8  2**3
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  3 .vectors      00000040  80027000  80027000  00037000  2**10
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  4 .biosheap     01800000  80027040  80027040  00037040  2**3
                  ALLOC
  5 ti.sysbios.family.arm.a8.mmuTableSection 00004000  402f4000  402f4000  00004000  2**14
                  ALLOC
  6 xdc.meta      000000e2  81827040  81827040  0187392c  2**2
                  CONTENTS, READONLY
  7 .text         00031898  81827130  81827130  01837130  2**4
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
  8 .ARM.exidx    00000008  818589c8  818589c8  018689c8  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  9 .data         0000af5c  818589d0  818589d0  018689d0  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
 10 .bss          0002f748  81863930  81863930  0187392c  2**3
                  ALLOC
 11 .comment      0000007f  00000000  00000000  01873a0e  2**0
                  CONTENTS, READONLY
 12 .ARM.attributes 0000003b  00000000  00000000  01873a8d  2**0
                  CONTENTS, READONLY

You can notice that .text section is at the offset 0x01827130 from beginning of .c_int00, which is also text. Becayse of that, all space between .text and .c_init00 not allocated for some section, was filled with 0. Linker script generator puts all sections, that are needed, but not defined in .cfg file after all those defined in .cfg file.

So solution was to define all sections that will occur in output file in right order in .cfg file:

Program.sectMap[".c_int00"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".c_int00"].loadAddress = 0x80000000;
Program.sectMap[".c_int00"].runAddress = 0x80000000;

Program.sectMap[".text"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".text"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".nonCachedRAM"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".nonCachedRAM"].loadSegment = "OCMC_SRAM";

Program.sectMap[".xAltera"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".xAltera"].loadSegment = "ALTERA_MEM";
Program.sectMap[".xAltera"].type = "NOLOAD";

Program.sectMap[".rodata"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".rodata"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".neardata"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".neardata"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap["ti.sysbios.family.arm.a8.mmuTableSection"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap["ti.sysbios.family.arm.a8.mmuTableSection"].loadSegment = "SRAM_HI";
Program.sectMap["ti.sysbios.family.arm.a8.mmuTableSection"].type = "NOLOAD";

Program.sectMap["xdc.meta"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap["xdc.meta"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".ARM.exidx"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".ARM.exidx"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".data"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".data"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".bss"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".bss"].loadSegment = "DDR2";

Program.sectMap[".biosheap"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".biosheap"].runSegment = "DDR2"
Program.sectMap[".biosheap"].type = "NOLOAD";

Program.sectMap[".stack"] = new Program.SectionSpec();
Program.sectMap[".stack"].loadSegment = "DDR2";
Program.sectMap[".stack"].type = "NOLOAD";

And resulting binary file has size 276616 bytes and elf sections looks like:

Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn
  0 .c_int00      000000b4  80000000  80000000  00010000  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
  1 .text         0003189c  800000c0  800000c0  000100c0  2**4
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE
  2 .rodata       00006e39  80031960  80031960  00041960  2**3
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  3 .vectors      00000040  80038800  80038800  00048800  2**10
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  4 ti.sysbios.family.arm.a8.mmuTableSection 00004000  402f4000  402f4000  00004000  2**14
                  ALLOC
  5 xdc.meta      000000e2  80038840  80038840  00048840  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  6 .ARM.exidx    00000008  80038924  80038924  00048924  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA
  7 .data         0000af5c  8003892c  8003892c  0004892c  2**2
                  CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA
  8 .bss          0002f748  80043888  80043888  00053888  2**3
                  ALLOC
  9 .biosheap     01800000  80072fd0  80072fd0  00053888  2**3
                  ALLOC
 10 .stack        00020000  81872fd0  81872fd0  00053888  2**3
                  ALLOC
 11 .comment      0000007f  00000000  00000000  00053888  2**0
                  CONTENTS, READONLY
 12 .ARM.attributes 0000003b  00000000  00000000  00053907  2**0
                  CONTENTS, READONLY

So thank you for help, it directed me to right solution.

0 Rahul Prabhu over 7 years ago in reply to Pawel Krezolek

TI__Guru** 116020 points

Thanks for posting the solution here.

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RTOS/AM3357: Heap configuration in GCC build