Hexagon System emulator — QEMU documentation

# Hexagon System emulator

Use the `qemu-system-hexagon` executable to simulate a 32-bit Hexagon machine.

## Hexagon Machines

Hexagon DSPs are suited to various functions and generally appear in a “DSP subsystem” of a larger system-on-chip (SoC).

Hexagon DSPs are often included in a subsystem that looks like the diagram below. Instructions are loaded into DDR before the DSP is brought out of reset and the first instructions are fetched from DDR via the EVB/reset vector.

In a real system, a TBU/SMMU would normally arbitrate AXI accesses but we don’t have a need to model that for QEMU.

Hexagon DSP cores use simultaneous multithreading (SMT) with as many as 8 hardware threads.

Diagram

           AHB (local) bus                     AXI (global) bus
                 │                                 │
                 │                                 │
    ┌─────────┐  │       ┌─────────────────┐       │
    │ L2VIC   ├──┤       │                 │       │
    │         ├──┼───────►                 ├───────┤
    └─────▲───┘  │       │   Hexagon DSP   │       │
          │      │       │                 │       │        ┌─────┐
          │      │       │    N threads    │       │        │ DDR │
          │      ├───────┤                 │       │        │     │
     ┌────┴──┐   │       │                 │       ├────────┤     │
     │QTimer ├───┤       │                 │       │        │     │
     │       │   │       │                 │       │        │     │
     └───────┘   │       │   ┌─────────┐   │       │        │     │
                 │       │  ┌─────────┐│   │       │        │     │
     ┌───────┐   │       │  │  HVX xM ││   │       │        │     │
     │QDSP6SS├───┤       │  │         │┘   │       │        │     │
     └───────┘   │       │  └─────────┘    │       │        └─────┘
                 │       │                 │       │
     ┌───────┐   │       └─────────────────┘       │
     │  CSR  ├───┤
     └───────┘   │   ┌──────┐   ┌───────────┐
                 │   │ TCM  │   │   VTCM    │
                     │      │   │           │
                     └──────┘   │           │
                                │           │
                                │           │
                                │           │
                                └───────────┘

# Components

Other than l2vic and HVX, the components below are not implemented in QEMU.

- L2VIC: the L2 vectored interrupt controller. Supports 1024 input interrupts, edge- or level-triggered. The core ISA has system registers `VID`, `VID1` which read through to the L2VIC device.

- QTimer: ARMSSE-based programmable timer device. Its interrupts are wired to the L2VIC. System registers `TIMER`, `UTIMER` read through to the QTimer device.

- QDSP6SS: DSP subsystem features, accessible to the entire SoC, including DSP NMI, watchdog, reset, etc.

- CSR: Configuration/Status Registers.

- TCM: DSP-exclusive tightly-coupled memory. This memory can be used for DSPs when isolated from DDR and in some bootstrapping modes.

- VTCM: DSP-exclusive vector tightly-coupled memory. This memory is accessed by some HVX instructions.

- HVX: the vector coprocessor supports 64 and 128-byte vector registers. 64-byte mode is not implemented in QEMU.

# Bootstrapping

Hexagon systems do not generally have access to a block device. So, for QEMU the typical use case involves loading a binary or ELF file into memory and executing from the indicated start address:

    $ qemu-system-hexagon -kernel ./prog -append 'arg1 arg2'

# Semihosting

Hexagon supports a semihosting interface similar to other architectures’. The `trap0` instruction can activate these semihosting calls so that the guest software can access the host console and filesystem. Semihosting is not yet implemented in QEMU hexagon.

## Hexagon Features

- Hexagon CPU architecture support
- Compute DSP