The Arm Zena Compute Subsystem (CSS) consists of a high-performance Arm Cortex-A720AE application processor system (primary compute), augmented with an Arm Cortex-R82AE–based Safety Island (SI) and a real-time domain to host additional system-safety monitoring and real-time services.
The system also includes a Runtime Security Engine (RSE), which is used for secure boot of the system elements and to provide runtime secure services.
The Arm Zena CSS Reference Software Stack provides an open-source, integrated solution running on a Fixed Virtual Platform (FVP). Both the reference software stack and the FVP are freely available.
For more information, see Arm Zena Compute Subsystem (CSS) .
Follow the steps to download and build the software stack in the Arm Zena CSS User Guide .
Here the default Arm Automotive Solutions Demo build is used.
The primary focus of this Learning Path is to demonstrate how to debug the software stack.
After you build the software stack, verify that it runs successfully:
kas shell -c "../layers/meta-arm/scripts/runfvp -t tmux --verbose"
The system runs through the boot process until a Linux prompt is available (in terminal_ns_uart0).
Press Ctrl+C in the command terminal to terminate the process.
The FVP is downloaded and installed as part of the build process.
You can also separately download Arm-Zena-CSS-FVP from the Arm Developer website .
See also the Arm Ecosystem FVPs and Architecture Envelope Models Install Guide .
For legacy reasons, the FVP is named FVP_RD_Aspen.
Arm Development Studio is a software development environment with multicore debug support for Arm CPUs. It provides early support for the latest processors and works seamlessly with FVPs.
The CPUs implemented within Arm Zena CSS are supported by Arm Development Studio 2024.0 and later; however, 2024.1 or later is recommended for Linux OS debug support. At the time of writing, the latest version is 2025.0, which is used for this Learning Path.
For more information, see Arm Development Studio .
Arm Development Studio is a commercial, license-managed product. For installation and setup instructions, see the Arm Development Studio Install Guide .
Launch the IDE and create a new workspace folder.
If you’re prompted by the launcher (this prompt is disabled by default), create a new folder there.
Otherwise, select File > Switch Workspace > Other.
To enable the workspace prompt, go to Window > Preferences > General > Startup and Shutdown > Workspaces, and enable Prompt for workspace on startup.