Infineon Tricore architecture support

[ilanbiala]

Are there plans to support Infineon's Tricore architecture? The MCU's ASIL rating goes up to ASIL-D and Infineon is a very popular choice for automotive MCUs, so it seems like a great fit considering Zephyr is targeting ASIL-D.

[ilanbiala]

Bump, any update on this?

[nashif]

@ilanbiala no plans currently however, we would consider any contributions supporting this architecture.

[parthitce]

@ilanbiala I have a received xmc4000 based development board today. I will start working on this for Zephyr support. I will be able to start for Tricore after this.

[carlescufi]

Please submit a Pull Request

[ilanbiala]

@parthitce just wanted to see if you ever got a chance to work on Tricore support?

[parthitce]

@ilanbiala Yes I did ported the arch parts of the Zephyr with the help of Aurix 2x ISA. But the board which I have from Infineon is based on Aurix 3x and it's not straight forward with the ISA for 3x series. I had to go via various NDA process which is almost done and waiting for Infineon to release the ISA in their collaborative platform.

IFX HAL is BSD licensed in general, but am still not sure about the open sourcing the IFX based in 3x. But HAL for 2x is possible. So the SoC porting is yet to be done and waiting for the ISA and license clearance from Infineon.

I used the Toolchain from hightech (close sourced), but there is also an attempt to port the GCC backend for tricore from my end. GCC backend work is posted here: https://github.com/parthitce/gcc, but it's long way to go.

I will push the WIP tree for tricore Zephyr port once I get the license clearance from Infineon.

[ilanbiala]

Awesome @parthitce, glad to hear that things are at least progressing! Any easy way to follow what's going on?

[mgiaco]

@parthitce Do you share the ported parts?

[parthitce]

@mgiaco
https://github.com/linumiz/zephyr/tree/tricore Here is the work in progress tree.
Please note that this tree includes only Architecture changes (not yet compilable) and SoC port for Aurix 3x is done but I can't release it to open source until I get a green signal for the iLLD HAL (it's Boost Software License - Version 1.0) & SoC ports from Infineon. Although NDA is done with Infineon, this will take some more time before getting into mainline Zephyr.

But in short, Linumiz and I myself handling this.

[go2sh]

Hey, whats the status on the tricore port? I have quite some experience with the tc3xx devices and a few boards to hand. I just saw one commit in the branche there.

[UVV-gh]

Is there any update on this?

[Jeepgoing]

Is there any update on this?

[nashif]

No immediate plans

[go2sh]

Hey, I startet the work to add Support for tricore Architecture. I'm able to Boot my tc37 and context switching is mostly done. Irq and gpio are next. Then I'll publish what I have, but the rest is up for debate.

[photex]

Hi @go2sh that sounds promising. I have a TC37AED board here I'd be interested in using with Zephyr (https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/AURIX-microcontroller-boards/application-boards/secure-ethernet-gateway/).
If I can help or contribute in some way please tell!

[go2sh]

Hey, I'm currently checking on how to publish my results with my employer. I'm actually done with all the required drivers and arch support.
Oh, nice a gateway board, a board file would be really helpful.
Also compiler support is a big question.
I'm most probably publish it in my fork at first.
BR,
go2sh

[photex]

That would be great. For our project we’re using gcc 11. Currently I run it via wine after extracting it from ADS, but I’ve just built tricore-gcc 11 for Linux and will switch to that if there are no issues.
The project I’m on is publicly funded at the moment. My company is kopernikusauto.com, and we’re working closely with NFF (https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/nff/projekte/sue). Uedelhoven studios is the project leader.
I mention all this in the hope that it may help share your work knowing there is public interest.

[go2sh]

Can you write me an email christoph.seitz@infineon.com (also in german) and we can set up a meeting. I'm interested in your use case and then we can discuss how we can support you.

[cperkulator]

I'd be super interested in this as well. I have quite a lot of hardware to test with. Would you be able to share your work privately? I might be able to help with some development.

[dongsheng-autra]

I found nuttx has tricore support nuttx_tricore

[photex]

Very cool!

[go2sh]

You find the current progress under: https://github.com/go2sh/zephyr/tree/tricore

Supported boards:
A2G TC375 Litekit

Current compilers supported are:
tricore-gcc from https://github.com/EEESlab/tricore-gcc
clang from HighTec EDV-Systems

CMake options for gcc are:
-DCMAKE_TRY_COMPILE_TARGET_TYPE=STATIC_LIBRARY
-DBOARD=kit_a2g_tc375_lite/tc375tp/tc162
Env is:
ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT="cross-compile"
CROSS_COMPILE="......../tricore-gcc-toolchain/bin/tricore-elf-"

CMake options for clang are:
-DCONFIG_LLVM_USE_LLD=y
-DCONFIG_BUILD_NO_GAP_FILL=y
-DCONFIG_COMPILER_RT_RTLIB=y
-DBOARD=kit_a2g_tc375_lite/tc375tp/tc162
Env is:
ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT="llvm"
LLVM_TOOLCHAIN_PATH="...../HighTec/toolchains/tricore/v8.1.2/"

[photex]

winIDEA will work with the lite kit, but only if you launch it from Aurix Developer Studio on Windows. I've tried to buy a license from iSystem to allow us to use their on-board mini-wiggler support without ADS but they actually refused to sell it and instead directed us to just buy one of their blue box units.
It's pretty silly but unless the management at these companies collectively feel like they have enough competition from the more open ecosystems, I doubt very much the situation will change.

[go2sh]

I can feel your frustration. There are some internal developments for flashing with Linux, but nothing official, yet. Until then, ADS or Aurix Flasher are the tools to chose. They should work with wine though.
https://community.infineon.com/t5/Knowledge-Base-Articles/AURIX-MCU-Capabilities-of-the-AURIX-Flasher-Software-Tool/ta-p/448038

[uLipe]

Hi @go2sh , thanks for the clarification on that point.

I don't mind of using something with wine, I understand the potential support for the debug probes under Linux/Mac may take some time.

This is something that makes me curious, when you say that ADS works on wine, it includes the flashing / debug tools?

I was able to install and run ADS on wine, but not tested against a real board yet.

[go2sh]

Isystem supports winIDEA via wine as their preferred solution. And i use it under linux with a bluebox, but that shouldnt matter. So it should also work with ADS, you may need to run it with a winidea window though (a setting in the Debug options)

[photex]

I’d be surprised that works with the onboard mini wiggler though. Doesn’t that require DAS?

[uLipe]

@go2sh @photex did you face this error before when building tricore gcc from sources:

/build/./gcc/as: 114: exec: -mtc131: not found

I also tried to disable the multilib without success.

[go2sh]

@cperkulator Looks like you are not on the tricore branch.

[cperkulator]

@go2sh @uLipe

that file is definitely there.

and I'm on the tricore branch

git branch
* tricore

I used west init -m https://github.com/go2sh/zephyr --mr tricore tricorezephyr

and build with west build -p always -b kit_a2g_tc375_lite/tc375tp/tc162 samples/basic/blinky -- -DCMAKE_TRY_COMPILE_TARGET_TYPE=STATIC_LIBRARY

as well as export ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT="cross-compile" and export CROSS_COMPILE="../../tricore-gcc-toolchain-11.3.0/INSTALL/bin/tricore-elf-"

not sure what else I could be missing

I should have included the whole output above...

Loading Zephyr default modules (Zephyr repository).
-- Application: /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr/samples/hello_world
-- CMake version: 3.22.1
-- Found Python3: /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/.venv/bin/python (found suitable version "3.10.12", minimum required is "3.8") found components: Interpreter 
-- Cache files will be written to: /home/caleb/.cache/zephyr
-- Zephyr version: 3.6.99 (/home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr)
-- Found west (found suitable version "1.2.0", minimum required is "0.14.0")
-- Board: kit_a2g_tc375_lite, identifier: tc375tp/tc162
-- Found toolchain: cross-compile (../../tricore-gcc-toolchain-11.3.0/INSTALL/bin/tricore-elf-)
-- Found Dtc: /usr/bin/dtc (found suitable version "1.6.1", minimum required is "1.4.6") 
-- Found BOARD.dts: /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr/boards/infineon/kit_a2g_tc375_lite/kit_a2g_tc375_lite.dts
CMake Error at /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr/cmake/modules/extensions.cmake:4205 (message):
  failed to preprocess devicetree files (error code No such file or
  directory):
  /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr/boards/infineon/kit_a2g_tc375_lite/kit_a2g_tc375_lite.dts
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr/cmake/modules/dts.cmake:230 (zephyr_dt_preprocess)
  /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr/cmake/modules/zephyr_default.cmake:132 (include)
  /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr/share/zephyr-package/cmake/ZephyrConfig.cmake:66 (include)
  /home/caleb/Projects/tricorezephyr/zephyr/share/zephyr-package/cmake/ZephyrConfig.cmake:117 (include_boilerplate)
  CMakeLists.txt:5 (find_package)

[uLipe]

did you do west update right after checkout to tricore branch? When installing fresh zephyr you would typically need do west init then go to the desired branch then west update.

[cperkulator]

yeah I did. Followed everything here: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/develop/getting_started/index.html. Guess I'll start from scratch in case I missed something.

[go2sh]

Can you check if the Board file mentioned is there? Maybe there is some spelling error. Deleting the cmake cache and zephyr cache might help as well.