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Toolchains for ARC Processors

System Requirements

GNU toolchain for ARC has the same standard prerequisites as an upstream GNU toolchain as documented in the GNU toolchain user guide or on the GCC website.

Prebuilt toolchain on the release page are supported on these systems for x86-64 targets:

  1. Ubuntu 22.04
  2. RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x and compatible alternatives
  3. Windows 11

Note that the TCF wrapper and the Buildlib tool are not supported for Windows hosts.

The Buildlib tool tool has extra requirements:

  1. Python 3.8 or higher is required. The default RedHat 8.x setup does not meet this requirement. You can install it using dnf and then use python3.8 for running the Buildlib script:

    $ sudo dnf install python3.8
$ python3.8 riscv64-snps-elf-buildlib ...

  2. Meson 0.61 is or higher required. The default RedHat 8.x setup does not meet this requirement. You can install it in a user environment using pip3:

    $ pip3 install --user --upgrade meson

    Then reboot the system or logout and login again.

Toolchains for Baremetal Targets

GNU toolchains for baremetal ARC targets consist of GCC, Binutils, GDB and a standard library. There are two versions of baremetal toolchain with different standard libraries: Picolibc and Newlib. There is a separate page for ARC Classic toolchain with Picolibc since it's still under development.

ARCompact, ARCv2 and ARCv3 families are supported for ARC Classic targets. GNU toolchain for ARC-V targets supports all ARC-V families:

  • Tuning GCC instruction scheduling for RMX-100, RMX-500, RHX-100 and RPX-100.
  • Includes optimized sets of libraries for basic profiles for RMX-100, RMX-500, RHX-100 and RPX-100.
  • Enabling ARC-V caches on startup.

This table depicts which GCC driver should be used depending on ISA:

ISA Driver/Triplet Driver/Triplet (alias) Families Endianness
ARC-V riscv64-snps-elf - RMX, RHX, RPX Little
ARCv3 arc64-elf-gcc arc64-snps-elf-gcc ARC HS6x, ARC HS5x Little1
ARCv2 arc-elf32-gcc arc-snps-elf-gcc ARC HS, ARC EM Little
ARCv2 arceb-elf32-gcc arceb-snps-elf-gcc ARC HS, ARC EM Big
ARCompact arc-elf32-gcc arc-snps-elf-gcc ARC 700, ARC 600 Little
ARCompact arceb-elf32-gcc arceb-snps-elf-gcc ARC 700, ARC 600 Big

Note that binaries for both ARCv1 and ARCv2 may be built using a single arc-elf32-gcc driver. It means that there is a single toolchain for two ISAs.

Prebuilt toolchains for ARCv3 families on the release page are configured with arc64-elf- prefix only and work both with HS5x and HS6x families. However, you can configure the toolchain for HS5x with arc32-elf- prefix using Crosstool-NG configuration menu.

Toolchains for Linux Targets for ARC Classic

There is a set of GNU toolchains for ARC Classic processors which allow to build and debug applications for Linux. The Linux kernel itself for ARC Classic processors may be built using both baremetal and Linux toolchains.

Linux toolchains are presented for all ARC processor families except ARC EM and ARC 600. Two Linux standard libraries are currently supported: glibc and uClibc-ng. This table depicts which GCC driver should be used depending on CPU family:

Family Standard library Driver/Triplet
ARC 700 glibc arc-linux-gnu-gcc
ARC 700 uClibc-ng arc-linux-uclibc-gcc
ARC HS3x/4x glibc arc-linux-gnu-gcc
ARC HS3x/4x uClibc-ng arc-linux-uclibc-gcc
ARC HS5x uClibc-ng arc32-linux-uclibc-gcc
ARC HS6x glibc arc64-linux-gnu-gcc

Note, that in case of Linux toolchains, arc-linux-* drivers for ARC 700 and ARC HS are different toolchains! For example, if you want to build applications for ARC 700 Linux targets, then you need to use a particular toolchain for ARC 700 and the same is applicable for ARC HS, though they have the same names.

Native Toolchains for Linux Targets for ARC Classic

Native toolchains are toolchains that can be used on the targets Linux system natively. Here is a list of native toolchains which are available on a release page:

Family Standard library Driver/Triplet
ARC HS3x/4x glibc arc-linux-gnu-gcc
ARC HS5x uClibc-ng arc32-linux-uclibc-gcc
ARC HS6x glibc arc64-linux-gnu-gcc

Eclipse IDE Package

Eclipse IDE bundle is also available on a release page. The bundle may contains different components depending on the host platform:

Component Linux Windows
Installer ❌ ✅
ARCompact/ARCv2 baremetal toolchain (little endian) ✅ ✅
ARCompact/ARCv2 baremetal toolchain (big endian) ✅ ✅
ARCv2 Linux uClibc toolchain (little endian) ✅ ❌
ARCv2 Linux uClibc toolchain (big endian) ✅ ❌
OpenOCD ✅ ✅
Eclipse IDE ✅ ✅

Linux toolchains are not included in the bundle for Windows because they are not supported by case-insensitive file systems.

Also, there is no an installer for Linux hosts - the bundle may be extracted and used anywhere in a file system. Add <ide>/bin directory to PATH variable to make all toolchain binaries available. Eclipse IDE may be launched by <ide>/eclipse/eclipse binary.

How to Get The Toolchain

There are several ways of getting the toolchain:

  1. Download the latest release of the prebuilt toolchain on the release page of main toolchain's repository. Also, Eclipse IDE is available for downloading which is shipped with some of toolchains and OpenOCD.
  2. You can build toolchains using Crosstool-NG build system. Follow instructions presented in README.md of main toolchain's repository on GitHub.

Resources

Because the ARC toolchains are built on top of standard components such as GCC, Binutils, and GDB, all functionality of these tools stays in place and can be studied in detail in the corresponding manuals:

  1. Big endian targets are not supported by GNU toolchain for ARCv3. ↩