Exploring AArch64 assembler

#1

Post by b3h3moth » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 12:36 PM UTC

Exploring AArch64 assembler
thinkingeek.com

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#2

Post by Lichtso » Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 5:37 PM UTC

For those who are interested in running your software on AArch64 hardware directly, without any additional firmware or operating system in between, I've developed a boot loader and tool chain to test and execute unikernels on a Pine64:

https://github.com/Lichtso/UnikernelExperiments

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#3

Post by wyldfire » Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 9:44 PM UTC

Another cool thing you can do is setup the kernel's binfmt handler to run the user-mode qemu emulation automatically.

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#4

Post by faragon » Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 9:54 PM UTC

I recommend the Pine 64 board. I bought one (2GB RAM, gigabit ethernet model, for 29$ [1]), and despite running its 4 cores at just 1.2GHz, it is quite speedy, and rock solid running Debian 24/7 as ARM64 build server.

[1] https://www.pine64.org/ (I'm not related to Pine, just a satisfied user)

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#5

Post by lgeek » Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 10:45 PM UTC

Lichtso wrote: post #2

For those who are interested in running your software on AArch64 hardware directly, without any additional firmware or operating system in between, I've developed a boot loader and tool chain to test and execute unikernels on a Pine64: https://github.com/Lichtso/UnikernelExperiments

Hmm, what are the advantages of using this bootloader over U-Boot? Or is it simply that U-Boot doesn't support Ethernet or some other peripherals on the A64 SoC?

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#6

Post by Palomides » Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

faragon wrote: post #4

I recommend the Pine 64 board. I bought one (2GB RAM, gigabit ethernet model, for 29$ [1]), and despite running its 4 cores at just 1.2GHz, it is quite speedy, and rock solid running Debian 24/7 as ARM64 build server. [1] https://www.pine64.org/ (I'm not related to Pine, just a satisfied user)

shame it's an allwinner SoC, they seem to have a history of GPL problems and binary blobs.

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#7

Post by conradev » Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 11:26 PM UTC

faragon wrote: post #4

I recommend the Pine 64 board. I bought one (2GB RAM, gigabit ethernet model, for 29$ [1]), and despite running its 4 cores at just 1.2GHz, it is quite speedy, and rock solid running Debian 24/7 as ARM64 build server. [1] https://www.pine64.org/ (I'm not related to Pine, just a satisfied user)

I wish I had know about the Pine 64! I ended up buying an ODROID-C2 (http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php) when looking for an AArch64 board, which is pretty similar.

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#8

Post by CountSessine » Mon, Oct 10, 2016, 11:48 PM UTC

conradev wrote: post #7

faragon wrote: post #4

I recommend the Pine 64 board. I bought one (2GB RAM, gigabit ethernet model, for 29$ [1]), and despite running its 4 cores at just 1.2GHz, it is quite speedy, and rock solid running Debian 24/7 as ARM64 build server. [1] https://www.pine64.org/ (I'm not related to Pine, just a satisfied user)

I wish I had know about the Pine 64! I ended up buying an ODROID-C2 ( http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php ) when looking for an AArch64 board, which is pretty similar.

I think you're better off with the Odroid and it's Amlogic CPU - the Pine 64 has an Allwinner CPU. You'll have fewer headaches getting kernels to build for and run on the Amlogic chip.

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#9

Post by ndesaulniers » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 12:13 AM UTC

> single-board computers that support the 64-bit mode of ARMv8 are less common

hey, you can use Nexus 5x, 6p or Pixel phones! I've been meaning to write a blog post about this.

Re: Exploring AArch64 assembler

#10

Post by dpc_pw » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:30 AM UTC

This article is very short and shallow. I mean... you can apply it to any architecture that Qemu supports (and there are many). Altogether there are 2 assembler instructions in the whole article. Not much of an exploration...

Qemu usermode emulation is nice, but the full-hardware emulation is way more interesting. Eg. in https://github.com/dpc/titanos - toy kernel for Aarch64 written in our lord-and-saviour programming language: Rust, I use Qemu to run kernel and unittests for that kernel. With Qemu gdb stubs it's like having a software-defined hardware platform with a JTAG debugger attached. `make run` and it runs - no need to plug cables and press reset buttons.