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Home > Armv8‑A Foundation Platform Introduction > Platform overview > Features and network support of the Foundation Platform |
The Arm®v8‑A Foundation Platform has numerous features and two types of network support.
The platform provides:
An Armv8‑A cluster model containing 1-4 cores that implements:
AArch64 at all Exception levels.
8GB of RAM.
The platform simulates up to 8GB of RAM.
To simulate a system with 4GB of RAM, you require a host with at least 8GB of RAM.
To simulate a system with 8GB of RAM, you require a host with at least 12GB of RAM.
Four PL011 UARTs connected to xterms.
Caches are modeled as stateless and there are no write buffers. This gives the effect of perfect memory coherence on the data side. The instruction side has a variable size prefetch buffer so requires correct barriers to be used in target code to operate correctly.
The platform runs as fast as possible unless all the cores in the cluster are
Wait for Interrupt (WFI)
or
Wait for Exception (WFE)
. In
the case of WFE
, the platform idles until an interrupt or external event
occurs.
The Foundation Platform has been revised to support the Arm Trusted Base System Architecture (TBSA) and Server Base System Architecture (SBSA). Several peripheral devices have been added, with corresponding changes to the memory map. It has also been updated to align more closely with peripherals present in the Versatile™ Express baseboard and the Arm Fast Models.
Software that is written to target the previous versions of the platform work
unmodified on the platform by using the --no-gicv3
configuration option. Only software
that uses the early blocks of RAM is likely to require some adjustments.
--secure-memory
command-line option is used. The platform provides the following types of network support:
The Armv8‑A Foundation Platform uses Arm Fast Models technology and forms part of a comprehensive suite of modeling solutions for Arm processors. These modeling solutions are available in the portfolio of models that are delivered through the Arm Fast Models product. For more information, see the Fast Models User Guide.