HCL:N1SDP

N1SDP

The N1SDP is an Armv8.2-A Neoverse reference design which includes Neoverse N1 CPU. The N1SDP is intended for use within a laboratory or engineering development environment.

Technical Data

CPU:
- 4x N1 cpu cores
Memory:
- DDR4: Currently only Micron 8GB /16GB single/dual Rank DIMMs supported (part number: 9ASF1G72PZ-2G6D1)
Standard UEFI boot environment

Installing

Because of PCIe patches which are not upstreamable, you must use an image from a Contrib repository which uses a patched kernel.

15.6

JeOS

15.4 (EOL)

JeOS

To get the serial output, please plug the USB cable. It will expose 4 ttyUSBx. The linux serial is on Application Processor (likely ttyUSB1). By default the four ports are connected to the following devices:

ttyUSB<n> Motherboard Configuration Controller (MCC)
ttyUSB<n+1> Application processor (AP)
ttyUSB<n+2> System Control Processor (SCP)
ttyUSB<n+3> Manageability Control Processor (MCP)

The port settings are:

115200 Baud
8N1
No parity
1 stop bit
No hardware or software flow support

Upgrading the firmware

You can get the latest firmware from https://gitlab.arm.com/arm-reference-solutions/board-firmware

Connect a USB-B cable between your host PC and your N1SDP’s DBG USB port and connect to the MCC console (ttyUSB0)
Power cycle your N1SDP
On the MCC console, press Enter to halt the boot process if prompted
On the MCC console, enter the following command to mount your N1SDP’s motherboard storage as a removable drive on your host PC:

Cmd> usb_on

Copy the firmware files and folders from the git tree to your N1SDP’s mounted motherboard storage, overwriting existing files.
If your board S/N is after 36253xxx, please update the PMIC section in MB/HBI0316A/io_v123f.txt file with the following lines to select 300k_8c2.bin instead of pms_0V85.bin:

[PMIC]
;MBPMIC: pms_0V85.bin        ;MB PMIC for boards before 36253xxx
MBPMIC: 300k_8c2.bin        ;MB PMIC for boards after 36253xxx

Power cycle your N1SDP
On the MCC console prompt, after all the updates, you can enter the following command to unmount your N1SDP’s motherboard storage as a removable drive on your host PC:

Cmd> usb_off

Known issues

PCIe requires some patches which are not upstream: https://gitlab.arm.com/arm-reference-solutions/linux/-/commits/n1sdp/ but are added to the devel:ARM:15.x:Contrib:N1SDP repository.
Here is the diff on top of the Kernel from SLE15-SP6/Leap 15.6: https://build.opensuse.org/package/rdiff/devel:ARM:15.6:Contrib:N1SDP/kernel-source?opackage=kernel-source&oproject=Kernel%3ASLE15-SP6
When booted from USB, the boot sometimes hangs depending on USB device. (Because of a race condition?). Boot from SATA is not affected.
On early versions, the case front panel USB 3.0 ports and & audio jacks are NOT connected/usable. They have been removed on later versions.
Check the documentation for latest known issues.