Interactive Mode

The following section explains the interactive mode of the CMSIS-Zone Utility. The following steps are explained:

• Create a CMSIS-Zone Project that allows to manage system resources.
• Memory and Peripheral Resources allows to create sub-memory regions and defines properties such as access permissions.
• Zone Partitioning that assigns available resources to sub-projects or execution compartments.
• Generate output files for device configuration and linker settings.

Create a CMSIS-Zone Project

Go to File - New - Project and select CMSIS - CMSIS-Zone Project:

Selecting "CMSIS-Zone Project"

Click Next. In the next window, enter a Project name:

Setting a project name

Click Next.

Variant 1: Using an existing *.rzone file

In the next window, select Use existing resource file (*.rzone) and browse to the location of the *.rzone file:

Path to an existing .rzone file

Click Finish. The new project is created and an empty *.azone file is added.

Variant 2: Using the SVD file from the device family pack

In the next window, use Select device to create resource file from device description:

Creating an .rzone file from SVD

Next, select your device from the list of installed device family packs:

Selecting a target device

Click Finish. The new project and the *.rzone file are created and an empty *.azone file is added.

Note

Make sure that you have set the path to your pack installation directory correctly. Go to Window -> Preferences and check the entry for the CMSIS Pack root folder (usually set to localappdata%\\Arm\\Packs:

Path to CMSIS Pack root folder

Memory and Peripheral Resources

The available memory can be further divided into smaller regions that are later assigned to zones, for example a zone for loader and zone for application.

For memory and peripherals properties such as access permission, privilege, and security level can be configured.

These settings can be for example used to generate source code files that configure the device at run-time.

View memory and peripheral resources

Initially, this uses the information in the *.rzone file which defines the generic access permissions for memory and peripherals. The CMSIS-Zone Editor shows the Resource Map of the given device:

Resource map example

Here, you can see all resources that are available on the device. You see Memory, Peripherals, ** Cores**, and Info related to the resources. Colored resources are assigned to a zone.

Create Memory Regions

To create a new memory region, right-click on the memory that you want to divide and select Add memory region:

Adding memory region

In the dialog a name derived from the parent memory region is provided. Change this region name as needed and specify the size. In this dialog, you change permissions, privilege, or security level for the memory region. When done, click Finish:

Configuring new memory block

The new memory region is immediately shown in the zone map. Depending on the security level, you may be able to assign this new region only to certain zones. For example, secure memory regions cannot be assigned to a non-secure zone.

New memory region in the project

The information about the memory regions is stored in the /azone/partition/memory element element of the *.azone file.

Delete Memory Regions

To delete a memory region, right-click on the memory region select Delete memory region:

Deleting a memory region

Resource Properties

To change the properties of a resource, such as a peripheral for example, right-click the resource and select Properties:

Selecting resource properties

Then, you can set these properties:

Configuring resource properties

General

• Shared: the resource can be accessed by more than one zone
• Startup: locate the vector table to this region
• No zero init: preserve RAM content at startup
• DMA: enable direct memory access

Permissions

• peripheral: mark this as a peripheral
• read
• write
• execute

Privilege

• not specified
• privileged
• unprivileged

Security

• not specified
• non-secure
• non-secure callable
• secure

The information about the peripherals is stored in the /azone/partition/peripheral element element of the *.azone file.

Configure peripheral slot access rights

Peripherals can have so called slots that can be configured separately. Depending on the peripheral, the slots have different names in the Zone Editor. For example, for DMA they are called Channels:

Configuring DMA Channels

For GPIOs, they are called Pins:

Configuring GPIO Pins

In the dialog, you can set security and privilege levels:

Security and privilege leves for Pins and Channels

The information about the slots is stored in the /azone/partition/peripheral/slot element element of the *.azone file.

Zone Partitioning

Every CMSIS-Zone project consists of one or more zones. The basic flow to create zones is as follows:

• In case of multi-core devices, create a zone for each processor.
• Then create at least one zone for each processor to be able to assign memories and peripherals. If your device contains Arm Cortex-M cores supporting TrustZone for Armv8-M, create a secure and a non-secure partition for each of these cores.

Create Zones

To split a multi-processor system into single-processor sub-systems, you need to create new zones. Switch to the Zones tab and click the Add new zone button: ( ).

In the new window, you need to specify a name for the zone, select the applicable core, and choose the security level (secure/non-secure).

In the Musca-A1 example, a new zone called "CM33_0" was created and attached to processor core 0 without any security attribute (not specified):

Adding new zone

Similarly, an additional zone called "CM33_1" was created and attached to processor core 1, without security attribute.

Save your settings with the Save button ( ).

Note

Adding zones only works for the currently opened .azone file. The information about the zones is stored in the /azone/zones element element of the *.azone file.

Generate output files

The CMSIS-Zone utility can generate files that represent the configuration of the system. These files can be used in the project source files or tool configuration files.

other toolchains for further development. The generator process creates:

• Configuration files for tool and hardware setup, that are defined by .ftl files in the project ftl directory.
• Files that represent sub-systems (.rzone and .azone) that can be partitioned further (restart the process).

To start the generation, press the Generate button or use the menu item CMSIS Zone - Generate ( ).

Check Project Explorer to observe the changes. In the project, the generated .azone and .rzone files appear and the ftl_gen directory contains the files defined by the ftl template files:

Output files in Project Exlporer