OpenISA VEGAboard

Overview

The VEGAboard contains the RV32M1 SoC, featuring two RISC-V CPUs, on-die XIP flash, and a full complement of peripherals, including a 2.4 GHz multi-protocol radio. It also has built-in sensors and Arduino-style expansion connectors.

RV32M1-VEGA

Fig. 197 OpenISA VEGAboard (image copyright: www.open-isa.org)

The two RISC-V CPUs are named RI5CY and ZERO-RISCY, and are respectively based on the PULP platform designs by the same names: RI5CY and ZERO-RISCY. RI5CY is the “main” core; it has more flash and RAM as well as a more powerful CPU design. ZERO-RISCY is a “secondary” core. The main ZERO-RISCY use-case is as a wireless coprocessor for applications running on RI5CY. The two cores can communicate via shared memory and messaging peripherals.

Currently, Zephyr supports RI5CY with the rv32m1_vega_ri5cy board configuration name, and ZERO_RISCY with the rv32m1_vega_zero_riscy board configuration name.

Hardware

The VEGAboard includes the following features.

RV32M1 multi-core SoC:

  • 1 MiB flash and 192 KiB SRAM (RI5CY core)

  • 256 KiB flash and 128 KiB SRAM (ZERO-RISCY core)

  • Low power modes

  • DMA support

  • Watchdog, CRC, cryptographic acceleration, ADC, DAC, comparator, timers, PWM, RTC, I2C, UART, SPI, external memory, I2S, smart card, USB full-speed, uSDHC, and 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio peripherals

On-board sensors and peripherals:

  • 32 Mbit SPI flash

  • 6-axis accelerometer, magnetometer, and temperature sensor (FXOS8700)

  • Ambient light sensor

  • RGB LED

  • microSD card slot

  • Antenna interface

Additional features:

  • Form-factor compatible with Arduino Uno Rev 3 expansion connector layout (not all Arduino shields may be pin-compatible)

  • UART via USB using separate OpenSDA chip

  • RISC-V flash and debug using external JTAG dongle (not included) via 2x5 5 mil pitch connector (commonly called the “ARM 10-pin JTAG” connector)

Supported Features

Zephyr’s RI5CY configuration, rv32m1_vega_ri5cy, currently supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

EVENT

on-chip

event unit interrupt controller

INTMUX

on-chip

level 2 interrupt controller

LPTMR

on-chip

lptmr-based system timer

PINMUX

on-chip

pinmux

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

UART

on-chip

serial

I2C(M)

on-chip

i2c

SPI

on-chip

spi

TPM

on-chip

pwm

SENSOR

off-chip

fxos8700 polling; fxos8700 trigger;

Zephyr’s ZERO-RISCY configuration, rv32m1_vega_zero_riscy, currently supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

EVENT

on-chip

event unit interrupt controller

INTMUX

on-chip

level 2 interrupt controller

LPTMR

on-chip

lptmr-based system timer

PINMUX

on-chip

pinmux

GPIO

on-chip

gpio

UART

on-chip

serial

I2C(M)

on-chip

i2c

TPM

on-chip

pwm

SENSOR

off-chip

fxos8700 polling; fxos8700 trigger;

Connections and IOs

RV32M1 SoC pins are brought out to Arduino-style expansion connectors. These are 2 pins wide each, adding an additional row of expansion pins per header compared to the standard Arduino layout.

They are described in the tables in the following subsections. Since pins are usually grouped by logical function in rows on these headers, the odd- and even-numbered pins are listed in separate tables. The “Port/bit” columns refer to the SoC PORT and GPIO peripheral naming scheme, e.g. “E/13” means PORTE/GPIOE pin 13.

See the schematic and chip reference manual for details. (Documentation is available from the OpenISA GitHub releases page.)

Note

Pins with peripheral functionality may also be muxed as GPIOs.

Top right expansion header (J1)

Odd/bottom pins:

Pin

Port/bit

Function

1

E/13

I2S_TX_BCLK

3

E/14

I2S_TX_FS

5

E/15

I2S_TXD

7

E/19

I2S_MCLK

9

E/16

I2S_RX_BCLK

11

E/21

SOF_OUT

13

E/17

I2S_RX_FS

15

E/18

I2S_RXD

Even/top pins:

Pin

Port/bit

Function

2

A/25

UART1_RX

4

A/26

UART1_TX

6

A/27

GPIO

8

B/13

PWM

10

B/14

GPIO

12

A/30

PWM

14

A/31

PWM/CMP

16

B/1

GPIO

Top left expansion header (J2)

Odd/bottom pins:

Pin

Port/bit

Function

1

D/5

FLEXIO_D25

3

D/4

FLEXIO_D24

5

D/3

FLEXIO_D23

7

D/2

FLEXIO_D22

9

D/1

FLEXIO_D21

11

D/0

FLEXIO_D20

13

C/30

FLEXIO_D19

15

C/29

FLEXIO_D18

17

C/28

FLEXIO_D17

19

B/29

FLEXIO_D16

Even/top pins:

Pin

Port/bit

Function

2

B/2

GPIO

4

B/3

PWM

6

B/6

SPI0_PCS2

8

B/5

SPI0_SOUT

10

B/7

SPI0_SIN

12

B/4

SPI0_SCK

14

GND

16

AREF

18

C/9

I2C0_SDA

20

C/10

I2C0_SCL

Bottom left expansion header (J3)

Note that the headers at the bottom of the board have odd-numbered pins on the top, unlike the headers at the top of the board.

Odd/top pins:

Pin

Port/bit

Function

1

A/21

ARDUINO_EMVSIM_PD

3

A/20

ARDUINO_EMVSIM_IO

5

A/19

ARDUINO_EMVSIM_VCCEN

7

A/18

ARDUINO_EMVSIM_RST

9

A/17

ARDUINO_EMVSIM_CLK

11

B/17

FLEXIO_D7

13

B/16

FLEXIO_D6

15

B/15

FLEXIO_D5

Even/bottom pins: note that these are mostly power-related.

Pin

Port/bit

Function

2

SDA_GPIO0

4

BRD_IO_PER

6

RST_SDA

8

BRD_IO_PER

10

P5V_INPUT

12

GND

14

GND

16

P5-9V VIN

Bottom right expansion header (J4)

Note that the headers at the bottom of the board have odd-numbered pins on the top, unlike the headers at the top of the board.

Odd/top pins:

Pin

Port/bit

Function

1

TAMPER2

3

TAMPER1/RTC_CLKOUT

5

TAMPER0/RTC_WAKEUP_b

7

E/2

ADC0_SE19

9

E/5

LPCMP1_IN2/LPCMP1_OUT

11

DAC0_OUT/ADC0_SE16/LPCMP0_IN3/LPCMP1_IN3

Even/bottom pins:

Pin

Port/bit

Function

2

C/11

ADC0_SE6

4

C/12

ADC0_SE7

6

B/9

ADC0_SE3

8

E/4

ADC0_SE21

10

E/10

ADC0_SE19 (and E/10, I2C3_SDA via 0 Ohm DNP)

12

E/11

ADC0_SE20 (and E/11, I2C3_SCL via 0 Ohm DNP)

Additional Pins

For an up-to-date description of additional pins (such as buttons, LEDs, etc.) supported by Zephyr, see the board DTS files in the Zephyr source code, i.e. boards/riscv/rv32m1_vega/rv32m1_vega_ri5cy.dts for RI5CY and boards/riscv/rv32m1_vega/rv32m1_vega_zero_riscy.dts for ZERO-RISCY.

See the schematic in the documentation available from the OpenISA GitHub releases page for additional details.

System Clocks

The RI5CY and ZERO-RISCY cores are configured to use the slow internal reference clock (SIRC) as the clock source for an LPTMR peripheral to manage the system timer, and the fast internal reference clock (FIRC) to generate a 48MHz core clock.

Serial Port

The USB connector at the top left of the board (near the RESET button) is connected to an OpenSDA chip which provides a serial USB device. This is connected to the LPUART0 peripheral which the RI5CY and ZERO-RISCY cores use by default for console and logging.

Warning

The OpenSDA chip cannot be used to flash or debug the RISC-V cores.

See the next section for flash and debug instructions for the RISC-V cores using an external JTAG dongle.

Programming and Debugging

Important

To use this board, you will need:

A JTAG dongle is not included with the board itself.

Follow these steps to:

  1. Get a toolchain and OpenOCD

  2. Set up the board for booting RI5CY

  3. Compile a Zephyr application for the RI5CY core

  4. Flash the application to your board

  5. Debug the board using GDB

Get the Toolchain and OpenOCD

Before programming and debugging, you first need to get a GNU toolchain and an OpenOCD build. There are vendor-specific versions of each for the RV32M1 SoC1.

Option 2: Building Toolchain and OpenOCD From Source

See Appendix: Building Toolchain and OpenOCD from Source.

JTAG Setup

This section describes how to connect to your board via the J-Link debugger and adapter board. See the above information for details on required hardware.

  1. Connect the J-Link debugger through the adapter board to the VEGAboard as shown in the figure.

    RV32M1-VEGA

    Fig. 198 VEGAboard connected properly to J-Link debugger. VEGAboard connector J55 should be used. Pin 1 is on the bottom left.

  2. Power the VEGAboard via USB. The OpenSDA connector at the top left is recommended for UART access.

  3. Make sure your J-Link is connected to your computer via USB.

One-Time Board Setup For Booting RI5CY or ZERO-RISCY

Next, you’ll need to make sure your board boots the RI5CY or ZERO-RISCY core. You only need to do this once.

The RV32M1 SoC on the VEGAboard has multiple cores, any of which can be selected as the boot core. Before flashing and debugging, you’ll first make sure you’re booting the right core.

Linux and macOS:

Note

Linux users: to run these commands as a normal user, you will need to install the 60-openocd.rules udev rules file (usually by placing it in /etc/udev/rules.d, then unplugging and plugging the J-Link in again via USB).

Note

These Zephyr-specific instructions differ slightly from the equivalent SDK ones. The Zephyr OpenOCD configuration file does not run init, so you have to do it yourself as explained below.

  1. In one terminal, use OpenOCD to connect to the board:

    ~/rv32m1-openocd -f boards/riscv/rv32m1_vega/support/openocd_rv32m1_vega_ri5cy.cfg
    

    The output should look like this:

    $ ~/rv32m1-openocd -f boards/riscv/rv32m1_vega/support/openocd_rv32m1_vega_ri5cy.cfg
    Open On-Chip Debugger 0.10.0+dev-00431-ge1ec3c7d (2018-10-31-07:29)
    [...]
    Info : Listening on port 3333 for gdb connections
    Info : Listening on port 6666 for tcl connections
    Info : Listening on port 4444 for telnet connections
    
  2. In another terminal, connect to OpenOCD’s telnet server and execute the init and ri5cy_boot commands with the reset button on the board (at top left) pressed down:

    $ telnet localhost 4444
    Trying 127.0.0.1...
    Connected to localhost.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    Open On-Chip Debugger
    > init
    > ri5cy_boot
    

To boot the ZERO-RISCY core instead, replace ri5cy_boot above with zero_boot.

The reset button is at top left, as shown in the following figure.

Reset button is pressed

Now quit the telnet session in this terminal and exit OpenOCD in the other terminal.

  1. Unplug your J-Link and VEGAboard, and plug them back in.

Windows:

In one cmd.exe prompt in the Zephyr directory:

C:\rv32m1-openocd\bin\openocd.exe rv32m1-openocd -f boards\riscv32\rv32m1_vega\support\openocd_rv32m1_vega_ri5cy.cfg

In a telnet program of your choice:

  1. Connect to localhost port 4444 using telnet.

  2. Run init and ri5cy_boot as shown above, with RESET held down.

  3. Quit the OpenOCD and telnet sessions.

  4. Unplug your J-Link and VEGAboard, and plug them back in.

To boot the ZERO-RISCY core instead, replace ri5cy_boot above with zero_boot.

Compiling a Program

Important

These instructions assume you’ve set up a development system, cloned the Zephyr repository, and installed Python dependencies as described in the Getting Started Guide.

You should also have already downloaded and installed the toolchain and OpenOCD as described above in Get the Toolchain and OpenOCD.

The first step is to set up environment variables to point at your toolchain and OpenOCD:

# Linux or macOS
export ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT=cross-compile
export CROSS_COMPILE=~/riscv32-unknown-elf-gcc/bin/riscv32-unknown-elf-

# Windows
set ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT=cross-compile
set CROSS_COMPILE=C:\riscv32-unknown-elf-gcc\bin\riscv32-unknown-elf-

Note

The above only sets these variables for your current shell session. You need to make sure this happens every time you use this board.

Now let’s compile the Hello World application. (You can try others as well; see Samples and Demos for more.)

Due to a toolchain linker issue, you need to add an option setting CMAKE_REQUIRED_FLAGS when running CMake to generate a build system (see Application Development for information about Zephyr’s build system).

Linux and macOS (run this in a terminal from the Zephyr directory):

# Set up environment and create build directory:
source zephyr-env.sh
# From the root of the zephyr repository
# On Linux/macOS
cd samples/hello_world
mkdir build && cd build

# On Windows
cd samples\hello_world
mkdir build & cd build

# Use cmake to configure a Ninja-based buildsystem:
cmake -GNinja -DBOARD=rv32m1_vega_ri5cy -DCMAKE_REQUIRED_FLAGS=-Wl,-dT=/dev/null ..

# Now run ninja on the generated build system:
ninja

Windows (run this in a cmd prompt, from the Zephyr directory):

# Set up environment and create build directory
zephyr-env.cmd
cd samples\hello_world
mkdir build & cd build

# Use CMake to generate a Ninja-based build system:
type NUL > empty.ld
cmake -GNinja -DBOARD=rv32m1_vega_ri5cy -DCMAKE_REQUIRED_FLAGS=-Wl,-dT=%cd%\empty.ld ..

# Build the sample
ninja

Flashing

Note

Make sure you’ve done the JTAG setup, and that the VEGAboard’s top left USB connector is connected to your computer too (for UART access).

Note

Linux users: to run these commands as a normal user, you will need to install the 60-openocd.rules udev rules file (usually by placing it in /etc/udev/rules.d, then unplugging and plugging the J-Link in again via USB).

Make sure you’ve followed the above instructions to set up your board and build a program first.

Since you need to use a special OpenOCD, the easiest way to flash is by using west flash instead of ninja flash like you might see with other Zephyr documentation.

Run these commands from the build directory where you ran ninja in the above section.

Linux and macOS:

# Don't use "~/rv32m1-openocd". It won't work.
west flash --openocd=$HOME/rv32m1-openocd

Windows:

west flash --openocd=C:\rv32m1-openocd\bin\openocd.exe

If you have problems:

  • Make sure you don’t have another openocd process running in the background.

  • Unplug the boards and plug them back in.

  • On Linux, make sure udev rules are installed, as described above.

As an alternative, for manual steps to run OpenOCD and GDB to flash, see the SDK README.

Debugging

Note

Make sure you’ve done the JTAG setup, and that the VEGAboard’s top left USB connector is connected to your computer too (for UART access).

Note

Linux users: to run these commands as a normal user, you will need to install the 60-openocd.rules udev rules file (usually by placing it in /etc/udev/rules.d, then unplugging and plugging the J-Link in again via USB).

Make sure you’ve followed the above instructions to set up your board and build a program first.

To debug with gdb:

# Linux, macOS
west debug --openocd=$HOME/rv32m1-openocd

# Windows
west debug --openocd=C:\rv32m1-openocd\bin\openocd.exe

Then, from the (gdb) prompt, follow these steps to halt the core, load the binary (zephyr.elf), and re-sync with the OpenOCD server:

(gdb) monitor init
(gdb) monitor reset halt
(gdb) load
(gdb) monitor gdb_sync
(gdb) stepi

You can then set breakpoints and debug using normal GDB commands.

Note

GDB can get out of sync with the target if you execute commands that reset it. To reset RI5CY and get GDB back in sync with it without reloading the binary:

(gdb) monitor reset halt
(gdb) monitor gdb_sync
(gdb) stepi

If you have problems:

  • Make sure you don’t have another openocd process running in the background.

  • Unplug the boards and plug them back in.

  • On Linux, make sure udev rules are installed, as described above.

References

Appendix: Building Toolchain and OpenOCD from Source

Note

Toolchain and OpenOCD build instructions are provided for Linux and macOS only.

Instructions for building OpenOCD have only been verified on Linux.

Warning

Don’t use installation directories with spaces anywhere in the path; this won’t work with Zephyr’s build system.

Ubuntu 18.04 users need to install these additional dependencies:

sudo apt-get install autoconf automake autotools-dev curl libmpc-dev \
                     libmpfr-dev libgmp-dev gawk build-essential bison \
                     flex texinfo gperf libtool patchutils bc zlib1g-dev \
                     libusb-1.0-0-dev libudev1 libudev-dev g++

Users of other Linux distributions need to install the above packages with their system package manager.

macOS users need to install dependencies with Homebrew:

brew install gawk gnu-sed gmp mpfr libmpc isl zlib

The build toolchain is based on the pulp-riscv-gnu-toolchain, with some additional patches hosted in a separate repository, rv32m1_gnu_toolchain_patch. To build the toolchain, follow the instructions in the rv32m1_gnu_toolchain_patch repository’s readme.md file to apply the patches, then run:

./configure --prefix=<toolchain-installation-dir> --with-arch=rv32imc --with-cmodel=medlow --enable-multilib
make

If you set <toolchain-installation-dir> to ~/riscv32-unknown-elf-gcc, you can use the above instructions for setting CROSS_COMPILE when building Zephyr applications. If you set it to something else, you will need to update your CROSS_COMPILE setting accordingly.

Note

Strangely, there is no separate make install step for the toolchain. That is, the make invocation both builds and installs the toolchain. This means make has to be run as root if you want to set --prefix to a system directory such as /usr/local or /opt on Linux.

To build OpenOCD, clone the rv32m1-openocd repository, then run these from the repository top level:

./bootstrap
./configure --prefix=<openocd-installation-dir>
make
make install

If <openocd-installation-dir> is ~/rv32m1-openocd, you should set your OpenOCD path to ~/rv32m1-openocd/bin/openocd in the above flash and debug instructions.

Footnotes

1

For Linux users, the RISC-V toolchain in the Zephyr SDK may work, but it hasn’t been thoroughly tested with this SoC, and will not allow use of any available RISC-V ISA extensions.

Support for the RV32M1 SoC is not currently available in the OpenOCD upstream repository or the OpenOCD build in the Zephyr SDK.