xref: /openbmc/u-boot/doc/README.qemu-arm (revision 173f023f)
1#
2# Copyright (C) 2017, Tuomas Tynkkynen <tuomas.tynkkynen@iki.fi>
3#
4# SPDX-License-Identifier:	GPL-2.0+
5#
6
7U-Boot on QEMU's 'virt' machine on ARM & AArch64
8================================================
9
10QEMU for ARM supports a special 'virt' machine designed for emulation and
11virtualization purposes. This document describes how to run U-Boot under it.
12Both 32-bit ARM and AArch64 are supported.
13
14The 'virt' platform provides the following as the basic functionality:
15
16    - A freely configurable amount of CPU cores
17    - U-Boot loaded and executing in the emulated flash at address 0x0
18    - A generated device tree blob placed at the start of RAM
19    - A freely configurable amount of RAM, described by the DTB
20    - A PL011 serial port, discoverable via the DTB
21    - An ARMv7/ARMv8 architected timer
22    - PSCI for rebooting the system
23    - A generic ECAM-based PCI host controller, discoverable via the DTB
24
25Additionally, a number of optional peripherals can be added to the PCI bus.
26
27Building U-Boot
28---------------
29Set the CROSS_COMPILE environment variable as usual, and run:
30
31- For ARM:
32    make qemu_arm_defconfig
33    make
34
35- For AArch64:
36    make qemu_arm64_defconfig
37    make
38
39Running U-Boot
40--------------
41The minimal QEMU command line to get U-Boot up and running is:
42
43- For ARM:
44    qemu-system-arm -machine virt,highmem=off -bios u-boot.bin
45
46- For AArch64:
47    qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt,highmem=off -cpu cortex-a57 -bios u-boot.bin
48
49The 'highmem=off' parameter to the 'virt' machine is required for PCI to work
50in U-Boot. Also, for some odd reason qemu-system-aarch64 needs to be explicitly
51told to use a 64-bit CPU or it will boot in 32-bit mode.
52
53Additional peripherals that have been tested to work in both U-Boot and Linux
54can be enabled with the following command line parameters:
55
56- To add a Serial ATA disk via an Intel ICH9 AHCI controller, pass e.g.:
57    -drive if=none,file=disk.img,id=mydisk -device ich9-ahci,id=ahci -device ide-drive,drive=mydisk,bus=ahci.0
58- To add an Intel E1000 network adapter, pass e.g.:
59    -netdev user,id=net0 -device e1000,netdev=net0
60- To add an EHCI-compliant USB host controller, pass e.g.:
61    -device usb-ehci,id=ehci
62- To add a NVMe disk, pass e.g.:
63    -drive if=none,file=disk.img,id=mydisk -device nvme,drive=mydisk,serial=foo
64
65These have been tested in QEMU 2.9.0 but should work in at least 2.5.0 as well.
66