R-Car Spider

Overview

R-Car S4 Spider board is based on the R-Car S4 SoC made for Car Server/Communication Gateway and that is composed of a octo Cortex®-A55, a dual lockstep Cortex®-R52 and a double dual lockstep G4MH.

The R-Car S4 SoC enables the launch of Car Server/CoGW with high performance, high-speed networking, high security and high functional safety levels that are required as E/E architectures evolve into domains and zones.

The R-Car S4 solution allows designers to re-use up to 88 percent of software code developed for 3rd generation R-Car SoCs and RH850 MCU applications. The software package supports the real-time cores with various drivers and basic software such as Linux BSP and hypervisors.

The Renesas R-Car Spider board is the Renesas R-Car S4 reference board and is designed for evaluating features and performance of this SoC.

Zephyr OS support is available for both Cortex®-A cores & Cortex®-R52 core.

More information about the S4 SoC can be fount at Renesas R-Car S4 chip.

Hardware

  • Spider features:

    • Connectors

      • CPU Board:

        • CN1 JTAG1

        • CN2 JTAG2

        • CN3 EX-SPI (QSPI0)

        • CN4 MicroSD Slot (back side)

        • CN11 EXIO Connector A (back side)

        • CN12 EXIO Connector B (back side)

        • CN14 EVT

        • CN16 OcuLink (PCIe0,PCIe1)

        • CN24 CAN 4pin

        • CN20 USB microAB (SCIF0)

        • CN21 USB microAB (HSCIF0)

        • CN22 SW Board

        • CN23 CPLD JTAG

        • CN27 FAN

        • CN30 Buck3

        • CN31 Buck1

        • CN32 CAN 8pin (back side)

      • Breakout Board:

        • CN11 EXIO Connector A

        • CN12 EXIO Connector B

        • CN13 CAN 0/1

        • CN15 CAN 3/4/5

        • CN18 CAN 6/7/8

        • CN21 CAN 2/9/10/11

        • CN24 CAN 12/13/14/15

        • CN28 LIN0

        • CN29 LIN1

        • CN30 LIN2

        • CN31 LIN3

        • CN32 LIN4

        • CN33 LIN5

        • CN34 LIN6

        • CN35 LIN7

        • CN36 EtherTS

        • CN37 MSIOF0

        • CN38 CAN/LIN BOARD

        • CN39 GPIO CN_A

        • CN40 GPIO

        • CN41 I2C

        • CN42 HSCIF0

        • CN43 SCIF0

        • CN44 TSN_CN

        • CN45 Legacy 12V-in

        • CN46 AC Adapter

        • CN48 POWER CONTROL

        • CN50 Debug Serial

        • CN51 FAN

    • Input

      • SW1 (SPI Flash Memory / EX-SPI connector)

      • SW2 (Hyper Flash Memory / SPI Flash Memory)

      • SW3 (MicroSD Card Slot / eMMC Memory)

      • SW4 (PRESETn)

      • SW6 (Interface Voltage Setting for MMC/JTAG2)

      • SW8 Mode Setting

      • SW10 (Software Switch)

      • SW11 (Board Power-Supply Circuit Control)

      • SW12 (AURORES#)

      • SW13 (CANFD0 RX)

      • SW14 (CANFD0 TX)

      • SW15 (System Reset Switch)

    • Output

      • LED7 Software Controllable LED

      • LED8 Software Controllable LED

Supported Features

The rcar_spider_s4 board supports the hardware features listed below.

on-chip / on-board
Feature integrated in the SoC / present on the board.
2 / 2
Number of instances that are enabled / disabled.
Click on the label to see the first instance of this feature in the board/SoC DTS files.
vnd,foo
Compatible string for the Devicetree binding matching the feature.
Click on the link to view the binding documentation.

rcar_spider_s4/r8a779f0/a55 target

Type

Location

Description

Compatible

Clock control

on-chip

Renesas R8A779F0 SoC Clock Pulse Generator / Module Standby and Software Reset1

renesas,r8a779f0-cpg-mssr

Interrupt controller

on-chip

ARM Generic Interrupt Controller v31

arm,gic-v3

MMC

on-chip

Renesas R-Car eMMC1

renesas,rcar-mmc

Pin control

on-chip

Renesas R-Car Pin Function Controller1

renesas,rcar-pfc

Power management CPU operations

on-chip

Power State Coordination Interface (PSCI) version 0.21

arm,psci-0.2

Regulator

on-chip

Fixed voltage regulators2

regulator-fixed

Serial controller

on-chip

Renesas R-Car HSCIF controller1

renesas,rcar-hscif

Timer

on-chip

per-core ARM architected timer1

arm,armv8-timer

rcar_spider_s4/r8a779f0/r52 target

Type

Location

Description

Compatible

CPU

on-chip

ARM Cortex-R52 CPU1

arm,cortex-r52

Clock control

on-chip

Renesas R8A779F0 SoC Clock Pulse Generator / Module Standby and Software Reset1

renesas,r8a779f0-cpg-mssr

GPIO & Headers

on-chip

Renesas RCAR GPIO2

renesas,rcar-gpio

Input

on-board

Group of GPIO-bound input keys1

gpio-keys

Interrupt controller

on-chip

ARM Generic Interrupt Controller v31

arm,gic-v3

LED

on-board

Group of GPIO-controlled LEDs1

gpio-leds

Pin control

on-chip

Renesas R-Car Pin Function Controller1

renesas,rcar-pfc

Serial controller

on-chip

Renesas R-Car UART controller1 1

renesas,rcar-scif

SRAM

on-chip

Generic on-chip SRAM1

mmio-sram

Timer

on-chip

per-core ARM architected timer1

arm,armv8-timer

Note

It is recommended to disable peripherals used by the R52 core on the Linux host.

Connections and IOs

The Spider board consists of a CPU board plugged on top of a Breakout board.

Here are the official IOs figures from eLinux for S4 board:

S4 Spider CPU board IOs

S4 Spider breakout board IOs

GPIO

By running Zephyr on S4 Spider, the software controllable LED ‘LED8’ can be used as output.

UART

Here is information about both serial ports provided on the S4 Spider board :

Physical Interface

Location

Software Interface

Converter

Further Information

CN20 USB Port

CPU Board

SCIF0/HSCIF1

FT232HQ

Default Zephyr serial

CN21 USB Port

CPU Board

SCIF3/HSCIF0

FT2232H-56Q

Used by U-BOOT & Linux

Note

The Zephyr console output is assigned to SCIF0 (CN20 USB Port) with settings: 115200 8N1 without hardware flow control by default.

I2C

I2C is mainly used to manage and power-on some onboard chips on the S4 Spider board.

Embedded I2C devices and I/O expanders are not yet supported. The current I2C support therefore does not make any devices available to the user at this time.

Programming and Debugging (A55)

At that time, no direct flashing method is officially supported by this Zephyr port. However, it is possible to load the Zephyr binary using U-Boot commands.

One of the ways to load Zephyr is shown below.

tftp 0x48000000 <tftp_server_path/zephyr.bin>
booti 0x48000000

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b rcar_spider_s4/r8a779f0/a55 samples/hello_world

Programming and Debugging (R52)

The rcar_spider_s4 board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.

flash debug debugserver rtt attach
openocd ✅ (default) ✅ (default)

Build and flash applications as usual (see Building an Application and Run an Application for more details).

Supported Debug Probe

The “Olimex ARM-USB-OCD-H” probe is the only officially supported probe.
This probe is supported by OpenOCD that is shipped with the Zephyr SDK.

The “Olimex ARM-USB-OCD-H” probe needs to be connected with a “Coresight 20 pins” adapter to CN1 connector on Spider board.

Configuring a Console

Connect a USB cable from your PC to CN20 USB port of your Spider board.

Use the following settings with your serial terminal of choice (minicom, putty, etc.):

  • Speed: 115200

  • Data: 8 bits

  • Parity: None

  • Stop bits: 1

Flashing

First of all, open your serial terminal.

Applications for the rcar_spider_s4/r8a779f0/r52 board configuration can be built in the usual way (see Building an Application for more details).

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b rcar_spider_s4/r8a779f0/r52 samples/hello_world
west flash

You should see the following message in the terminal:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.3.0-rc2 ***
Hello World! rcar_spider_s4

Debugging

First of all, open your serial terminal.

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b rcar_spider_s4/r8a779f0/r52 samples/hello_world
west debug

You will then get access to a GDB session for debugging.

By continuing the app, you should see the following message in the terminal:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.3.0-rc2 ***
Hello World! rcar_spider_s4

References