SPEAr ARM Linux Overview

Introduction

SPEAr (Structured Processor Enhanced Architecture). weblink : http://www.st.com/spear

The ST Microelectronics SPEAr range of ARM9/CortexA9 System-on-Chip CPUs are supported by the ‘spear’ platform of ARM Linux. Currently SPEAr1310, SPEAr1340, SPEAr300, SPEAr310, SPEAr320 and SPEAr600 SOCs are supported.

Hierarchy in SPEAr is as follows:

SPEAr (Platform)

  • SPEAr3XX (3XX SOC series, based on ARM9)
    • SPEAr300 (SOC)

      • SPEAr300 Evaluation Board

    • SPEAr310 (SOC)

      • SPEAr310 Evaluation Board

    • SPEAr320 (SOC)

      • SPEAr320 Evaluation Board

  • SPEAr6XX (6XX SOC series, based on ARM9)
    • SPEAr600 (SOC)

      • SPEAr600 Evaluation Board

  • SPEAr13XX (13XX SOC series, based on ARM CORTEXA9)
    • SPEAr1310 (SOC)

      • SPEAr1310 Evaluation Board

    • SPEAr1340 (SOC)

      • SPEAr1340 Evaluation Board

Configuration

A generic configuration is provided for each machine, and can be used as the default by:

make spear13xx_defconfig
make spear3xx_defconfig
make spear6xx_defconfig

Layout

The common files for multiple machine families (SPEAr3xx, SPEAr6xx and SPEAr13xx) are located in the platform code contained in arch/arm/plat-spear with headers in plat/.

Each machine series have a directory with name arch/arm/mach-spear followed by series name. Like mach-spear3xx, mach-spear6xx and mach-spear13xx.

Common file for machines of spear3xx family is mach-spear3xx/spear3xx.c, for spear6xx is mach-spear6xx/spear6xx.c and for spear13xx family is mach-spear13xx/spear13xx.c. mach-spear* also contain soc/machine specific files, like spear1310.c, spear1340.c spear300.c, spear310.c, spear320.c and spear600.c. mach-spear* doesn’t contains board specific files as they fully support Flattened Device Tree.

Document Author

Viresh Kumar <vireshk@kernel.org>, (c) 2010-2012 ST Microelectronics