Port Zephyr RTOS and run applications on the Arm Corstone-320 MPS4 platform
Introduction
Set up the Zephyr build environment
Add Zephyr board support for the Arm Corstone-320 MPS4 platform
Build and run the hello_world sample on Arm Corstone-320 MPS4
Next Steps

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Build the hello_world example for MPS4

The Zephyr hello_world example prints “Hello World” to the console. Use it to validate that your board support and toolchain configuration work correctly.

Activate your Python virtual environment:

    

        
        
source ~/zephyrproject/.venv/bin/activate

If you haven’t set the toolchain environment variables in your current terminal, set them now. For full setup steps, see Set up the Zephyr build environment :

    

        
        
export ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT=gnuarmemb
export GNUARMEMB_TOOLCHAIN_PATH=$HOME/arm-gnu-toolchain-15.2.rel1-aarch64-arm-none-eabi

Replace the path with the path to your toolchain directory. On x86_64, the directory name starts with x86_64 instead of aarch64.

From the ~/zephyrproject/zephyr directory, build the hello_world example for the Corstone-320 FPGA variant:

    

        
        
west build -p always -b mps4/corstone320/fpga zephyr/samples/hello_world -- -DCONFIG_ROMSTART_RELOCATION_ROM=y

The output is similar to:

    

        
        [xxx/xxx] Linking C executable zephyr/zephyr.elf
Memory region         Used Size  Region Size  %age Used
 ROMSTART_REGION:         xxx B       128 KB      x.xx%
           FLASH:       xxxxx B         4 MB      x.xx%
             RAM:        xxxx B         2 MB      x.xx%

Verify that the ELF image was created:

    

        
        
ls build/zephyr/zephyr.elf

The output is similar to:

    

        
        build/zephyr/zephyr.elf

The ELF image contains the application and the Zephyr kernel libraries. You can now load it onto the MPS4 board.

Run the hello_world application on the MPS4 board

To run the application on the MPS4 board, follow these steps:

  1. Download the board files from FI101 .

  2. Set up the MPS4 platform according to the Using the FI101 on MPS4 board .

  3. For the hello_world application, place the vector table in the FPGA boot ROM at address 0x11000000, and place the remaining code and data in SRAM at address 0x31000000. Use arm-none-eabi-objcopy to extract these two regions from build/zephyr/zephyr.elf:

    

        
        
arm-none-eabi-objcopy  -O binary --only-section=rom_start zephyr.elf vector.bin
arm-none-eabi-objcopy  -O binary --remove-section=rom_start zephyr.elf app.bin
  1. Update images.txt under /MB/HBI0376B/FI101 to load the two images. The paths use the \SOFTWARE\ folder on the MPS4 SD card, which is where you will copy the binary files:
    

        
        
IMAGE0PORT: 2
IMAGE0ADDRESS: 0x00_1100_0000           ; Address to load into
IMAGE0UPDATE: RAM
IMAGE0FILE: \SOFTWARE\vector.bin        ; Image/data to be loaded

IMAGE1PORT: 1
IMAGE1ADDRESS: 0x31000000               ; Address to load into
IMAGE1UPDATE: RAM
IMAGE1FILE: \SOFTWARE\app.bin           ; Image/data to be loaded
  1. Copy vector.bin and app.bin to the \SOFTWARE\ folder on the MPS4 SD card, then power on the board. If the setup is correct, the UART console prints the “Hello World” message, similar to the following example:

Image Alt Text:UART console output showing “Hello World! arm” from Zephyr running on the Corstone-320 MPS4 board

What you’ve accomplished

You’ve now built and run the Zephyr hello_world example on the MPS4 board.

You can use the workflow outlined in this Learning Path as a foundation to further customize Zephyr on the Corstone-320 MPS4 platform and validate a complete build-and-run workflow.

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