AWS Management Console allows you to control AWS services from a browser window and so provides a simple way to manually setup and use Arm Virtual Hardware AMI.

The key steps in this operation flow are:

Launch AMI Instance .
Connect to the AMI Instance .
Run projects using launched AMI instance.
Terminate the AMI instance once it is no longer required.

Launch AMI Instance

An instance of Arm Virtual Hardware AMI can be easily created in AWS Management Console as follows:

Login to the AWS Management Console, search for AWS Marketplace Subscriptions and navigate to the corresponding service.
Find Arm Virtual Hardware already listed in your AWS Marketplace Subscriptions.
- If AVH subsription is not shown, verify that your AWS account is correctly subscribed to Arm Virtual Hardware.
Click on Launch new instance for the Arm Virtual Hardware subscription.
Select the initial parameters, especially important is the AWS region. Note that this page gives you access to the Ami Id.
Click on Continue to launch through EC2 and proceed to the launch instance wizard.
Configure the instance parameters. Mandatory options are explained below but many other parameters can be also defined here:
- Instance Type: select EC2 instance type for running AVH AMI. See System Requirements for information.
- Key Pair: select an existing key pair or create a new one. This is required to be able to connect to the AMI instance remotely.
- Network Settings: verify that VPC Id is specified here. Keep SSH connection enabled.
- Configure Storage: by default 24 GiB of storage is assoticated with the AMI instance and is sufficient for most applications. However, you can specify the storage parameters here if needed.
- Review the parameters and click Launch Instance to create the AVH AMI instance.
- You should receive notification that instance was succesfully created.
- Navigate to the EC2 service and find newly launched AVH AMI instance listed there and in having "Running" state.

Connect to the AMI Instance

There are multiple ways to connect to the AMI instance that runs Arm Virtual Hardware. For full details refer AWS User Guide Connect to your Linux instance.

In this section two mechanisms are described:

Connect from browser explains the simplest way to access the AMI directly from a browser window.
Connect Using SSH allows you to establish remote connection to the AMI using Secure Shell protocol.

Connect from browser

For simple interaction with the AVH AMI you can run EC2 Instance Connect web-application in your browser directly from the AWS Management Console.

Go to EC2 - Instances
Select a running AVH AMI instance.
Click Connect (or alternatively use menu Actions - Connect)
Verify that EC2 Instance Connect tab is selected.
Specify ubuntu in the User Name and press Connect.
AMI Linux console opens in a new browser tab.

Connect to AVH AMI from browser

Connect using SSH

To connect via the Secure Shell (SSH) client of your computer, run the following command in the terminal window:

$ ssh -i <path>/your_key.pem ubuntu@<Public IPv4 DNS>

Where:

ssh is the SSH command
option -i specifies the location of the AWS private key file that has the file extension *.pem. Shall correspond to the key pair registered with the AMI instance in Launch AMI Instance.
ubuntu is the user name of the Amazon EC2 Ubuntu Linux instance.
<Public IPv4 DNS> is the public address typically in the format: ec2-*nn*-*nn*-*nn*-*nn*.compute-1.amazonaws.com .

Note that the ubuntu user by default has no password, because this is not allowed in AWS Marketplace. So initial connection requires authentication via private key file. After logging in, you can enable password authentications as follows:

Enable password login:
$ sudo sed -i '/PasswordAuthentication no/c\PasswordAuthentication yes' /etc/ssh/sshd_config

$ sudo service ssh restart
Set the password value, for example as mypassword:
$ echo "ubuntu:mypassword" | sudo chpasswd

Now you can login using password authentication:

$ ssh ubuntu@<Public IPv4 DNS>

and will be requested to enter the password created above (mypassword in this example).

In AWS Management Console you can find the instructions with SSH parameters for a specific AMI instance. Go to EC2 - Instances, select your instance, press Connect and then select the tab SSH client.

Find more details in AWS help Connect to your Linux instance using SSH.

Run projects

After connecting to the AVH AMI instance you can copy, compile and run applications on Arm Fixed Virtual Platforms. This section shows how this can be done using the Micro speech example.

Copy the example code to the AMI. Since the project is available on GitHub just execute in the AMI command line:

$ git clone https://github.com/arm-software/AVH-TFLmicrospeech.git

For shared private projects your GitHub Username and Password key will be required to clone.

Navigate to the example directory:

$ cd ./AVH-TFLmicrospeech/Platform_FVP_Corstone_SSE-300_Ethos-U55

Install the necessary CMSIS Packs (you may need to change permissions for the script):

$ chmod 777 packlist.sh

$ ./packlist.sh

Note that if this generated errors, you most likely have a legacy set up. Use this command to install packs instead:

$ cp_install.sh packlist

Build the example:

$ cbuild.sh microspeech.Example.cprj

When built, you can now run the example on the FVP:

$ ./run_example.sh

The output should display similar to:

Fast Models [11.15.14 (Jun 23 2021)]
Copyright 2000-2021 ARM Limited.
All Rights Reserved.
 
telnetterminal0: Listening for serial connection on port 5000
telnetterminal1: Listening for serial connection on port 5001
telnetterminal2: Listening for serial connection on port 5002
telnetterminal5: Listening for serial connection on port 5003
 
    Ethos-U rev f19bc8d4 --- Apr 23 2021 13:24:11
    (C) COPYRIGHT 2019-2021 Arm Limited
    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
Heard yes (147) @1000ms
Heard no (141) @5600ms
Heard yes (149) @9100ms
Heard no (142) @13600ms
Heard yes (149) @17100ms
 
Info: Simulation is stopping. Reason: Cycle limit has been exceeded.
 
Info: /OSCI/SystemC: Simulation stopped by user.
[warning ][main@0][01 ns] Simulation stopped by user
 
--- cpu_core statistics: ----------------------------------------------------
Simulated time                          : 20.000002s
User time                               : 396.865593s
System time                             : 1.924400s
Wall time                               : 398.550649s
Performance index                       : 0.05
cpu_core.cpu0                           :  10.03 MIPS (  4000000000 Inst)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other connections

Enable Code Server (Visual Studio Code)

The Arm Virtual Hardware AMI comes with Code Server, enabling access to Visual Studio Code with a web browser. To access it, you will need to start a SSH tunnel to the instance and forward port 8080.

On Linux, MacOS or Windows Powershell:

ssh -i <key.pem> -N -L 8080:localhost:8080 ubuntu@<AMI_IP_addr>

The -N option holds the SSH tunnel connection and does not allow to execute other remote commands. This is useful when only forwarding ports.

You can then access the IDE via a web browser on your local machine at http://localhost:8080

Enable Virtual Network Computing (VNC)

VNC is a protocol to enable remote desktop. The instructions below will securely enable VNC through a SSH tunnel.

In the AMI terminal:

Enable and set VNC password (You do not need to enter a view-only password when prompted)
vncpasswd
To start the VNC server for the session
sudo systemctl start vncserver@1.service
To restart the VNC server after reboot
sudo systemctl enable vncserver@1.service

On your local machine:

Forward port 5901 on local machine. On Linux, MacOS or Windows Powershell:
ssh -I <key.pem> -N –L 5901:localhost:5901 ubuntu@<AMI_IP_addr>

The -N option holds the SSH tunnel connection and does not allow to execute other remote commands. This is useful when only forwarding ports.

Connect your VNC client (e.g. Remmina, TigerVNC) to port 5901. You will be prompted for the VNC password.