Could someone suggest a way to change the boot value of a control register (e.g. ACTLR)? It seems like i'd want to do it in bl31:bl31_arch_setup(), but does each CPU go through bl31 or just the boot CPU? If I was just interested in the A7s is there a way to only boot them?
Thanks,
Ali
The SCC register defines which CPUs the SCP will release from reset. You should be able to see the Cortex-A57 cluster is powered down if you stop the boot in UEFI (pressing any key). It seems that the Linux kernel is bringing up the Cortex-A57 cores during the kernel boot. I just performed a quick test, in which I removed the reference to the Cortex-A57 cores in the DST file (then compile the new DTB). This seems to do the trick. I assume there's a more elegant way to do this.
If this has answered your questions, can you please mark this as Correct.
Thanks again for all of your help Luke!
Hi Asaidi,
I think along with the precise changes suggested by Luke we need to also modify the kernel config option NR_CPUS to 4 as well to avoid any unnecessary data structure initialization during the Linux kernel boot up.
Great Answer Luke!