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arm-trusted-firmware/docs/change-log.md

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ARM Trusted Firmware - version 1.2

New features

  • The Trusted Board Boot implementation on ARM platforms now conforms to the mandatory requirements of the TBBR specification.

    In particular, the boot process is now guarded by a Trusted Watchdog, which will reset the system in case of an authentication or loading error. On ARM platforms, a secure instance of ARM SP805 is used as the Trusted Watchdog.

    Also, a firmware update process has been implemented. It enables authenticated firmware to update firmware images from external interfaces to SoC Non-Volatile memories. This feature functions even when the current firmware in the system is corrupt or missing; it therefore may be used as a recovery mode.

  • Improvements have been made to the Certificate Generation Tool (cert_create) as follows.

    • Added support for the Firmware Update process by extending the Chain of Trust definition in the tool to include the Firmware Update certificate and the required extensions.

    • Introduced a new API that allows one to specify command line options in the Chain of Trust description. This makes the declaration of the tool's arguments more flexible and easier to extend.

    • The tool has been reworked to follow a data driven approach, which makes it easier to maintain and extend.

  • Extended the FIP tool (fip_create) to support the new set of images involved in the Firmware Update process.

  • Various memory footprint improvements. In particular:

    • The bakery lock structure for coherent memory has been optimised.

    • The mbed TLS SHA1 functions are not needed, as SHA256 is used to generate the certificate signature. Therefore, they have been compiled out, reducing the memory footprint of BL1 and BL2 by approximately 6 KB.

    • On ARM development platforms, each BL stage now individually defines the number of regions that it needs to map in the MMU.

  • Added the following new design documents:

  • Applied the new image terminology to the code base and documentation, as described on the TF wiki on GitHub.

  • The build system has been reworked to improve readability and facilitate adding future extensions.

  • On ARM standard platforms, BL31 uses the boot console during cold boot but switches to the runtime console for any later logs at runtime. The TSP uses the runtime console for all output.

  • Implemented a basic NOR flash driver for ARM platforms. It programs the device using CFI (Common Flash Interface) standard commands.

  • Implemented support for booting EL3 payloads on ARM platforms, which reduces the complexity of developing EL3 baremetal code by doing essential baremetal initialization.

  • Provided separate drivers for GICv3 and GICv2. These expect the entire software stack to use either GICv2 or GICv3; hybrid GIC software systems are no longer supported and the legacy ARM GIC driver has been deprecated.

  • Added support for Juno r1 and r2. A single set of Juno TF binaries can run on Juno r0, r1 and r2 boards. Note that this TF version depends on a Linaro release that does not contain Juno r2 support.

  • Added support for MediaTek mt8173 platform.

  • Implemented a generic driver for ARM CCN IP.

  • Major rework of the PSCI implementation.

    • Added framework to handle composite power states.

    • Decoupled the notions of affinity instances (which describes the hierarchical arrangement of cores) and of power domain topology, instead of assuming a one-to-one mapping.

    • Better alignment with version 1.0 of the PSCI specification.

  • Added support for the SYSTEM_SUSPEND PSCI API on ARM platforms. When invoked on the last running core on a supported platform, this puts the system into a low power mode with memory retention.

  • Unified the reset handling code as much as possible across BL stages. Also introduced some build options to enable optimization of the reset path on platforms that support it.

  • Added a simple delay timer API, as well as an SP804 timer driver, which is enabled on FVP.

  • Added support for NVidia Tegra T210 and T132 SoCs.

  • Reorganised ARM platforms ports to greatly improve code shareability and facilitate the reuse of some of this code by other platforms.

  • Added support for ARM Cortex-A72 processor in the CPU specific framework.

  • Provided better error handling. Platform ports can now define their own error handling, for example to perform platform specific bookkeeping or post-error actions.

  • Implemented a unified driver for ARM Cache Coherent Interconnects used for both CCI-400 & CCI-500 IPs. ARM platforms ports have been migrated to this common driver. The standalone CCI-400 driver has been deprecated.

Issues resolved since last release

  • The Trusted Board Boot implementation has been redesigned to provide greater modularity and scalability. See the Authentication Framework document. All missing mandatory features are now implemented.

  • The FVP and Juno ports may now use the hash of the ROTPK stored in the Trusted Key Storage registers to verify the ROTPK. Alternatively, a development public key hash embedded in the BL1 and BL2 binaries might be used instead. The location of the ROTPK is chosen at build-time using the ARM_ROTPK_LOCATION build option.

  • GICv3 is now fully supported and stable.

Known issues

  • The version of the AEMv8 Base FVP used in this release resets the model instead of terminating its execution in response to a shutdown request using the PSCI SYSTEM_OFF API. This issue will be fixed in a future version of the model.

  • While this version has low on-chip RAM requirements, there are further RAM usage enhancements that could be made.

  • The upstream documentation could be improved for structural consistency, clarity and completeness. In particular, the design documentation is incomplete for PSCI, the TSP(D) and the Juno platform.

  • Building TF with compiler optimisations disabled (-O0) fails.

ARM Trusted Firmware - version 1.1

New features

  • A prototype implementation of Trusted Board Boot has been added. Boot loader images are verified by BL1 and BL2 during the cold boot path. BL1 and BL2 use the PolarSSL SSL library to verify certificates and images. The OpenSSL library is used to create the X.509 certificates. Support has been added to fip_create tool to package the certificates in a FIP.

  • Support for calling CPU and platform specific reset handlers upon entry into BL3-1 during the cold and warm boot paths has been added. This happens after another Boot ROM reset_handler() has already run. This enables a developer to perform additional actions or undo actions already performed during the first call of the reset handlers e.g. apply additional errata workarounds.

  • Support has been added to demonstrate routing of IRQs to EL3 instead of S-EL1 when execution is in secure world.

  • The PSCI implementation now conforms to version 1.0 of the PSCI specification. All the mandatory APIs and selected optional APIs are supported. In particular, support for the PSCI_FEATURES API has been added. A capability variable is constructed during initialization by examining the plat_pm_ops and spd_pm_ops exported by the platform and the Secure Payload Dispatcher. This is used by the PSCI FEATURES function to determine which PSCI APIs are supported by the platform.

  • Improvements have been made to the PSCI code as follows.

    • The code has been refactored to remove redundant parameters from internal functions.

    • Changes have been made to the code for PSCI CPU_SUSPEND, CPU_ON and CPU_OFF calls to facilitate an early return to the caller in case a failure condition is detected. For example, a PSCI CPU_SUSPEND call returns SUCCESS to the caller if a pending interrupt is detected early in the code path.

    • Optional platform APIs have been added to validate the power_state and entrypoint parameters early in PSCI CPU_ON and CPU_SUSPEND code paths.

    • PSCI migrate APIs have been reworked to invoke the SPD hook to determine the type of Trusted OS and the CPU it is resident on (if applicable). Also, during a PSCI MIGRATE call, the SPD hook to migrate the Trusted OS is invoked.

  • It is now possible to build Trusted Firmware without marking at least an extra page of memory as coherent. The build flag USE_COHERENT_MEM can be used to choose between the two implementations. This has been made possible through these changes.

    • An implementation of Bakery locks, where the locks are not allocated in coherent memory has been added.

    • Memory which was previously marked as coherent is now kept coherent through the use of software cache maintenance operations.

    Approximately, 4K worth of memory is saved for each boot loader stage when USE_COHERENT_MEM=0. Enabling this option increases the latencies associated with acquire and release of locks. It also requires changes to the platform ports.

  • It is now possible to specify the name of the FIP at build time by defining the FIP_NAME variable.

  • Issues with depedencies on the 'fiptool' makefile target have been rectified. The fip_create tool is now rebuilt whenever its source files change.

  • The BL3-1 runtime console is now also used as the crash console. The crash console is changed to SoC UART0 (UART2) from the previous FPGA UART0 (UART0) on Juno. In FVP, it is changed from UART0 to UART1.

  • CPU errata workarounds are applied only when the revision and part number match. This behaviour has been made consistent across the debug and release builds. The debug build additionally prints a warning if a mismatch is detected.

  • It is now possible to issue cache maintenance operations by set/way for a particular level of data cache. Levels 1-3 are currently supported.

  • The following improvements have been made to the FVP port.

    • The build option FVP_SHARED_DATA_LOCATION which allowed relocation of shared data into the Trusted DRAM has been deprecated. Shared data is now always located at the base of Trusted SRAM.

    • BL2 Translation tables have been updated to map only the region of DRAM which is accessible to normal world. This is the region of the 2GB DDR-DRAM memory at 0x80000000 excluding the top 16MB. The top 16MB is accessible to only the secure world.

    • BL3-2 can now reside in the top 16MB of DRAM which is accessible only to the secure world. This can be done by setting the build flag FVP_TSP_RAM_LOCATION to the value dram.

  • Separate transation tables are created for each boot loader image. The IMAGE_BLx build options are used to do this. This allows each stage to create mappings only for areas in the memory map that it needs.

  • A Secure Payload Dispatcher (OPTEED) for the OP-TEE Trusted OS has been added. Details of using it with ARM Trusted Firmware can be found in OP-TEE Dispatcher

Issues resolved since last release

  • The Juno port has been aligned with the FVP port as follows.

    • Support for reclaiming all BL1 RW memory and BL2 memory by overlaying the BL3-1/BL3-2 NOBITS sections on top of them has been added to the Juno port.

    • The top 16MB of the 2GB DDR-DRAM memory at 0x80000000 is configured using the TZC-400 controller to be accessible only to the secure world.

    • The ARM GIC driver is used to configure the GIC-400 instead of using a GIC driver private to the Juno port.

    • PSCI CPU_SUSPEND calls that target a standby state are now supported.

    • The TZC-400 driver is used to configure the controller instead of direct accesses to the registers.

  • The Linux kernel version referred to in the user guide has DVFS and HMP support enabled.

  • DS-5 v5.19 did not detect Version 5.8 of the Cortex-A57-A53 Base FVPs in CADI server mode. This issue is not seen with DS-5 v5.20 and Version 6.2 of the Cortex-A57-A53 Base FVPs.

Known issues

  • The Trusted Board Boot implementation is a prototype. There are issues with the modularity and scalability of the design. Support for a Trusted Watchdog, firmware update mechanism, recovery images and Trusted debug is absent. These issues will be addressed in future releases.

  • The FVP and Juno ports do not use the hash of the ROTPK stored in the Trusted Key Storage registers to verify the ROTPK in the plat_match_rotpk() function. This prevents the correct establishment of the Chain of Trust at the first step in the Trusted Board Boot process.

  • The version of the AEMv8 Base FVP used in this release resets the model instead of terminating its execution in response to a shutdown request using the PSCI SYSTEM_OFF API. This issue will be fixed in a future version of the model.

  • GICv3 support is experimental. There are known issues with GICv3 initialization in the ARM Trusted Firmware.

  • While this version greatly reduces the on-chip RAM requirements, there are further RAM usage enhancements that could be made.

  • The firmware design documentation for the Test Secure-EL1 Payload (TSP) and its dispatcher (TSPD) is incomplete. Similarly for the PSCI section.

  • The Juno-specific firmware design documentation is incomplete.

ARM Trusted Firmware - version 1.0

New features

  • It is now possible to map higher physical addresses using non-flat virtual to physical address mappings in the MMU setup.

  • Wider use is now made of the per-CPU data cache in BL3-1 to store:

    • Pointers to the non-secure and secure security state contexts.

    • A pointer to the CPU-specific operations.

    • A pointer to PSCI specific information (for example the current power state).

    • A crash reporting buffer.

  • The following RAM usage improvements result in a BL3-1 RAM usage reduction from 96KB to 56KB (for FVP with TSPD), and a total RAM usage reduction across all images from 208KB to 88KB, compared to the previous release.

    • Removed the separate early_exception vectors from BL3-1 (2KB code size saving).

    • Removed NSRAM from the FVP memory map, allowing the removal of one (4KB) translation table.

    • Eliminated the internal psci_suspend_context array, saving 2KB.

    • Correctly dimensioned the PSCI aff_map_node array, saving 1.5KB in the FVP port.

    • Removed calling CPU mpidr from the bakery lock API, saving 160 bytes.

    • Removed current CPU mpidr from PSCI common code, saving 160 bytes.

    • Inlined the mmio accessor functions, saving 360 bytes.

    • Fully reclaimed all BL1 RW memory and BL2 memory on the FVP port by overlaying the BL3-1/BL3-2 NOBITS sections on top of these at runtime.

    • Made storing the FP register context optional, saving 0.5KB per context (8KB on the FVP port, with TSPD enabled and running on 8 CPUs).

    • Implemented a leaner tf_printf() function, allowing the stack to be greatly reduced.

    • Removed coherent stacks from the codebase. Stacks allocated in normal memory are now used before and after the MMU is enabled. This saves 768 bytes per CPU in BL3-1.

    • Reworked the crash reporting in BL3-1 to use less stack.

    • Optimized the EL3 register state stored in the cpu_context structure so that registers that do not change during normal execution are re-initialized each time during cold/warm boot, rather than restored from memory. This saves about 1.2KB.

    • As a result of some of the above, reduced the runtime stack size in all BL images. For BL3-1, this saves 1KB per CPU.

  • PSCI SMC handler improvements to correctly handle calls from secure states and from AArch32.

  • CPU contexts are now initialized from the entry_point_info. BL3-1 fully determines the exception level to use for the non-trusted firmware (BL3-3) based on the SPSR value provided by the BL2 platform code (or otherwise provided to BL3-1). This allows platform code to directly run non-trusted firmware payloads at either EL2 or EL1 without requiring an EL2 stub or OS loader.

  • Code refactoring improvements:

    • Refactored fvp_config into a common platform header.

    • Refactored the fvp gic code to be a generic driver that no longer has an explicit dependency on platform code.

    • Refactored the CCI-400 driver to not have dependency on platform code.

    • Simplified the IO driver so it's no longer necessary to call io_init() and moved all the IO storage framework code to one place.

    • Simplified the interface the the TZC-400 driver.

    • Clarified the platform porting interface to the TSP.

    • Reworked the TSPD setup code to support the alternate BL3-2 intialization flow where BL3-1 generic code hands control to BL3-2, rather than expecting the TSPD to hand control directly to BL3-2.

    • Considerable rework to PSCI generic code to support CPU specific operations.

  • Improved console log output, by:

    • Adding the concept of debug log levels.

    • Rationalizing the existing debug messages and adding new ones.

    • Printing out the version of each BL stage at runtime.

    • Adding support for printing console output from assembler code, including when a crash occurs before the C runtime is initialized.

  • Moved up to the latest versions of the FVPs, toolchain, EDK2, kernel, Linaro file system and DS-5.

  • On the FVP port, made the use of the Trusted DRAM region optional at build time (off by default). Normal platforms will not have such a "ready-to-use" DRAM area so it is not a good example to use it.

  • Added support for PSCI SYSTEM_OFF and SYSTEM_RESET APIs.

  • Added support for CPU specific reset sequences, power down sequences and register dumping during crash reporting. The CPU specific reset sequences include support for errata workarounds.

  • Merged the Juno port into the master branch. Added support for CPU hotplug and CPU idle. Updated the user guide to describe how to build and run on the Juno platform.

Issues resolved since last release

  • Removed the concept of top/bottom image loading. The image loader now automatically detects the position of the image inside the current memory layout and updates the layout to minimize fragementation. This resolves the image loader limitations of previously releases. There are currently no plans to support dynamic image loading.

  • CPU idle now works on the publicized version of the Foundation FVP.

  • All known issues relating to the compiler version used have now been resolved. This TF version uses Linaro toolchain 14.07 (based on GCC 4.9).

Known issues

  • GICv3 support is experimental. The Linux kernel patches to support this are not widely available. There are known issues with GICv3 initialization in the ARM Trusted Firmware.

  • While this version greatly reduces the on-chip RAM requirements, there are further RAM usage enhancements that could be made.

  • The firmware design documentation for the Test Secure-EL1 Payload (TSP) and its dispatcher (TSPD) is incomplete. Similarly for the PSCI section.

  • The Juno-specific firmware design documentation is incomplete.

  • Some recent enhancements to the FVP port have not yet been translated into the Juno port. These will be tracked via the tf-issues project.

  • The Linux kernel version referred to in the user guide has DVFS and HMP support disabled due to some known instabilities at the time of this release. A future kernel version will re-enable these features.

  • DS-5 v5.19 does not detect Version 5.8 of the Cortex-A57-A53 Base FVPs in CADI server mode. This is because the <SimName> reported by the FVP in this version has changed. For example, for the Cortex-A57x4-A53x4 Base FVP, the <SimName> reported by the FVP is FVP_Base_Cortex_A57x4_A53x4, while DS-5 expects it to be FVP_Base_A57x4_A53x4.

    The temporary fix to this problem is to change the name of the FVP in sw/debugger/configdb/Boards/ARM FVP/Base_A57x4_A53x4/cadi_config.xml. Change the following line:

    <SimName>System Generator:FVP_Base_A57x4_A53x4</SimName>

    to System Generator:FVP_Base_Cortex-A57x4_A53x4

    A similar change can be made to the other Cortex-A57-A53 Base FVP variants.

ARM Trusted Firmware - version 0.4

New features

  • Makefile improvements:

    • Improved dependency checking when building.

    • Removed dump target (build now always produces dump files).

    • Enabled platform ports to optionally make use of parts of the Trusted Firmware (e.g. BL3-1 only), rather than being forced to use all parts. Also made the fip target optional.

    • Specified the full path to source files and removed use of the vpath keyword.

  • Provided translation table library code for potential re-use by platforms other than the FVPs.

  • Moved architectural timer setup to platform-specific code.

  • Added standby state support to PSCI cpu_suspend implementation.

  • SRAM usage improvements:

    • Started using the -ffunction-sections, -fdata-sections and --gc-sections compiler/linker options to remove unused code and data from the images. Previously, all common functions were being built into all binary images, whether or not they were actually used.

    • Placed all assembler functions in their own section to allow more unused functions to be removed from images.

    • Updated BL1 and BL2 to use a single coherent stack each, rather than one per CPU.

    • Changed variables that were unnecessarily declared and initialized as non-const (i.e. in the .data section) so they are either uninitialized (zero init) or const.

  • Moved the Test Secure-EL1 Payload (BL3-2) to execute in Trusted SRAM by default. The option for it to run in Trusted DRAM remains.

  • Implemented a TrustZone Address Space Controller (TZC-400) driver. A default configuration is provided for the Base FVPs. This means the model parameter -C bp.secure_memory=1 is now supported.

  • Started saving the PSCI cpu_suspend 'power_state' parameter prior to suspending a CPU. This allows platforms that implement multiple power-down states at the same affinity level to identify a specific state.

  • Refactored the entire codebase to reduce the amount of nesting in header files and to make the use of system/user includes more consistent. Also split platform.h to separate out the platform porting declarations from the required platform porting definitions and the definitions/declarations specific to the platform port.

  • Optimized the data cache clean/invalidate operations.

  • Improved the BL3-1 unhandled exception handling and reporting. Unhandled exceptions now result in a dump of registers to the console.

  • Major rework to the handover interface between BL stages, in particular the interface to BL3-1. The interface now conforms to a specification and is more future proof.

  • Added support for optionally making the BL3-1 entrypoint a reset handler (instead of BL1). This allows platforms with an alternative image loading architecture to re-use BL3-1 with fewer modifications to generic code.

  • Reserved some DDR DRAM for secure use on FVP platforms to avoid future compatibility problems with non-secure software.

  • Added support for secure interrupts targeting the Secure-EL1 Payload (SP) (using GICv2 routing only). Demonstrated this working by adding an interrupt target and supporting test code to the TSP. Also demonstrated non-secure interrupt handling during TSP processing.

Issues resolved since last release

  • Now support use of the model parameter -C bp.secure_memory=1 in the Base FVPs (see New features).

  • Support for secure world interrupt handling now available (see New features).

  • Made enough SRAM savings (see New features) to enable the Test Secure-EL1 Payload (BL3-2) to execute in Trusted SRAM by default.

  • The tested filesystem used for this release (Linaro AArch64 OpenEmbedded 14.04) now correctly reports progress in the console.

  • Improved the Makefile structure to make it easier to separate out parts of the Trusted Firmware for re-use in platform ports. Also, improved target dependency checking.

Known issues

  • GICv3 support is experimental. The Linux kernel patches to support this are not widely available. There are known issues with GICv3 initialization in the ARM Trusted Firmware.

  • Dynamic image loading is not available yet. The current image loader implementation (used to load BL2 and all subsequent images) has some limitations. Changing BL2 or BL3-1 load addresses in certain ways can lead to loading errors, even if the images should theoretically fit in memory.

  • The ARM Trusted Firmware still uses too much on-chip Trusted SRAM. A number of RAM usage enhancements have been identified to rectify this situation.

  • CPU idle does not work on the advertised version of the Foundation FVP. Some FVP fixes are required that are not available externally at the time of writing. This can be worked around by disabling CPU idle in the Linux kernel.

  • Various bugs in ARM Trusted Firmware, UEFI and the Linux kernel have been observed when using Linaro toolchain versions later than 13.11. Although most of these have been fixed, some remain at the time of writing. These mainly seem to relate to a subtle change in the way the compiler converts between 64-bit and 32-bit values (e.g. during casting operations), which reveals previously hidden bugs in client code.

  • The firmware design documentation for the Test Secure-EL1 Payload (TSP) and its dispatcher (TSPD) is incomplete. Similarly for the PSCI section.

ARM Trusted Firmware - version 0.3

New features

  • Support for Foundation FVP Version 2.0 added. The documented UEFI configuration disables some devices that are unavailable in the Foundation FVP, including MMC and CLCD. The resultant UEFI binary can be used on the AEMv8 and Cortex-A57-A53 Base FVPs, as well as the Foundation FVP.

    NOTE: The software will not work on Version 1.0 of the Foundation FVP.

  • Enabled third party contributions. Added a new contributing.md containing instructions for how to contribute and updated copyright text in all files to acknowledge contributors.

  • The PSCI CPU_SUSPEND API has been stabilised to the extent where it can be used for entry into power down states with the following restrictions:

    • Entry into standby states is not supported.
    • The API is only supported on the AEMv8 and Cortex-A57-A53 Base FVPs.

  • The PSCI AFFINITY_INFO api has undergone limited testing on the Base FVPs to allow experimental use.

  • Required C library and runtime header files are now included locally in ARM Trusted Firmware instead of depending on the toolchain standard include paths. The local implementation has been cleaned up and reduced in scope.

  • Added I/O abstraction framework, primarily to allow generic code to load images in a platform-independent way. The existing image loading code has been reworked to use the new framework. Semi-hosting and NOR flash I/O drivers are provided.

  • Introduced Firmware Image Package (FIP) handling code and tools. A FIP combines multiple firmware images with a Table of Contents (ToC) into a single binary image. The new FIP driver is another type of I/O driver. The Makefile builds a FIP by default and the FVP platform code expect to load a FIP from NOR flash, although some support for image loading using semi- hosting is retained.

    NOTE: Building a FIP by default is a non-backwards-compatible change.

    NOTE: Generic BL2 code now loads a BL3-3 (non-trusted firmware) image into DRAM instead of expecting this to be pre-loaded at known location. This is also a non-backwards-compatible change.

    NOTE: Some non-trusted firmware (e.g. UEFI) will need to be rebuilt so that it knows the new location to execute from and no longer needs to copy particular code modules to DRAM itself.

  • Reworked BL2 to BL3-1 handover interface. A new composite structure (bl31_args) holds the superset of information that needs to be passed from BL2 to BL3-1, including information on how handover execution control to BL3-2 (if present) and BL3-3 (non-trusted firmware).

  • Added library support for CPU context management, allowing the saving and restoring of

    • Shared system registers between Secure-EL1 and EL1.
    • VFP registers.
    • Essential EL3 system registers.

  • Added a framework for implementing EL3 runtime services. Reworked the PSCI implementation to be one such runtime service.

  • Reworked the exception handling logic, making use of both SP_EL0 and SP_EL3 stack pointers for determining the type of exception, managing general purpose and system register context on exception entry/exit, and handling SMCs. SMCs are directed to the correct EL3 runtime service.

  • Added support for a Test Secure-EL1 Payload (TSP) and a corresponding Dispatcher (TSPD), which is loaded as an EL3 runtime service. The TSPD implements Secure Monitor functionality such as world switching and EL1 context management, and is responsible for communication with the TSP. NOTE: The TSPD does not yet contain support for secure world interrupts. NOTE: The TSP/TSPD is not built by default.

Issues resolved since last release

  • Support has been added for switching context between secure and normal worlds in EL3.

  • PSCI API calls AFFINITY_INFO & PSCI_VERSION have now been tested (to a limited extent).

  • The ARM Trusted Firmware build artifacts are now placed in the ./build directory and sub-directories instead of being placed in the root of the project.

  • The ARM Trusted Firmware is now free from build warnings. Build warnings are now treated as errors.

  • The ARM Trusted Firmware now provides C library support locally within the project to maintain compatibility between toolchains/systems.

  • The PSCI locking code has been reworked so it no longer takes locks in an incorrect sequence.

  • The RAM-disk method of loading a Linux file-system has been confirmed to work with the ARM Trusted Firmware and Linux kernel version (based on version 3.13) used in this release, for both Foundation and Base FVPs.

Known issues

The following is a list of issues which are expected to be fixed in the future releases of the ARM Trusted Firmware.

  • The TrustZone Address Space Controller (TZC-400) is not being programmed yet. Use of model parameter -C bp.secure_memory=1 is not supported.

  • No support yet for secure world interrupt handling.

  • GICv3 support is experimental. The Linux kernel patches to support this are not widely available. There are known issues with GICv3 initialization in the ARM Trusted Firmware.

  • Dynamic image loading is not available yet. The current image loader implementation (used to load BL2 and all subsequent images) has some limitations. Changing BL2 or BL3-1 load addresses in certain ways can lead to loading errors, even if the images should theoretically fit in memory.

  • The ARM Trusted Firmware uses too much on-chip Trusted SRAM. Currently the Test Secure-EL1 Payload (BL3-2) executes in Trusted DRAM since there is not enough SRAM. A number of RAM usage enhancements have been identified to rectify this situation.

  • CPU idle does not work on the advertised version of the Foundation FVP. Some FVP fixes are required that are not available externally at the time of writing.

  • Various bugs in ARM Trusted Firmware, UEFI and the Linux kernel have been observed when using Linaro toolchain versions later than 13.11. Although most of these have been fixed, some remain at the time of writing. These mainly seem to relate to a subtle change in the way the compiler converts between 64-bit and 32-bit values (e.g. during casting operations), which reveals previously hidden bugs in client code.

  • The tested filesystem used for this release (Linaro AArch64 OpenEmbedded 14.01) does not report progress correctly in the console. It only seems to produce error output, not standard output. It otherwise appears to function correctly. Other filesystem versions on the same software stack do not exhibit the problem.

  • The Makefile structure doesn't make it easy to separate out parts of the Trusted Firmware for re-use in platform ports, for example if only BL3-1 is required in a platform port. Also, dependency checking in the Makefile is flawed.

  • The firmware design documentation for the Test Secure-EL1 Payload (TSP) and its dispatcher (TSPD) is incomplete. Similarly for the PSCI section.

ARM Trusted Firmware - version 0.2

New features

  • First source release.

  • Code for the PSCI suspend feature is supplied, although this is not enabled by default since there are known issues (see below).

Issues resolved since last release

  • The "psci" nodes in the FDTs provided in this release now fully comply with the recommendations made in the PSCI specification.

Known issues

The following is a list of issues which are expected to be fixed in the future releases of the ARM Trusted Firmware.

  • The TrustZone Address Space Controller (TZC-400) is not being programmed yet. Use of model parameter -C bp.secure_memory=1 is not supported.

  • No support yet for secure world interrupt handling or for switching context between secure and normal worlds in EL3.

  • GICv3 support is experimental. The Linux kernel patches to support this are not widely available. There are known issues with GICv3 initialization in the ARM Trusted Firmware.

  • Dynamic image loading is not available yet. The current image loader implementation (used to load BL2 and all subsequent images) has some limitations. Changing BL2 or BL3-1 load addresses in certain ways can lead to loading errors, even if the images should theoretically fit in memory.

  • Although support for PSCI CPU_SUSPEND is present, it is not yet stable and ready for use.

  • PSCI API calls AFFINITY_INFO & PSCI_VERSION are implemented but have not been tested.

  • The ARM Trusted Firmware make files result in all build artifacts being placed in the root of the project. These should be placed in appropriate sub-directories.

  • The compilation of ARM Trusted Firmware is not free from compilation warnings. Some of these warnings have not been investigated yet so they could mask real bugs.

  • The ARM Trusted Firmware currently uses toolchain/system include files like stdio.h. It should provide versions of these within the project to maintain compatibility between toolchains/systems.

  • The PSCI code takes some locks in an incorrect sequence. This may cause problems with suspend and hotplug in certain conditions.

  • The Linux kernel used in this release is based on version 3.12-rc4. Using this kernel with the ARM Trusted Firmware fails to start the file-system as a RAM-disk. It fails to execute user-space init from the RAM-disk. As an alternative, the VirtioBlock mechanism can be used to provide a file-system to the kernel.

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