# ZedBoard GNU Radio image boot problems **URL:** \ **Category:** GNU Radio\ **Created:** [September 3, 2014, 10:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/zedboard-gnu-radio-image-boot-problems/231880 "2014-09-03T22:32:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![addis\_a](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@addis\_a](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/addis_a)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2014, 10:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/zedboard-gnu-radio-image-boot-problems/231880/1 "2014-09-03T22:32:06Z")
I’m trying to boot a ZedBoard with the GNU Radio image here: [http://gnuradio.org/data/sdk/zedboard\_armv7a-hf-vfp-neon/](http://gnuradio.org/data/sdk/zedboard_armv7a-hf-vfp-neon/). I picked the hard float image even though the tutorial points to the soft float image ([http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Zynq](http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Zynq)). I don’t know why I’d want the soft float image since using the FPU will be much faster. I followed the directions at the aforementioned tutorial except I renamed “u-boot.bin” to “BOOT.BIN” and “uImage-zedboard-zynq7.dtb” to “devicetree.dtb”. I could not get the board to boot. The USB-to-UART triggers cdc\_acm to load /dev/ttyACM0 on my Linux host PC, but there is no activity over serial. I’m confident the board is not dead because I am able to boot from the preloaded SD card that came with the ZedBoard development kit. Does anybody have any suggestions? It seems like either some step is missing or I am misunderstanding a step in the tutorial. Thanks, Sean Nowlan ---
**Author:** ![NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f05b48/32.png) [@NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/NowlanS_Sean)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2014, 10:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/zedboard-gnu-radio-image-boot-problems/231880/2 "2014-09-03T22:47:19Z")
On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:30 PM, Nowlan, Sean [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > I’m trying to boot a ZedBoard with the GNU Radio image here: > [http://gnuradio.org/data/sdk/zedboard\_armv7a-hf-vfp-neon/](http://gnuradio.org/data/sdk/zedboard_armv7a-hf-vfp-neon/). I picked the > hard float image even though the tutorial points to the soft float image ( > [http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Zynq](http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Zynq)). I don’t know > why I’d want the soft float image since using the FPU will be much faster. There’s a bug in ORC on hard float. So we were looking into soft float + ORC or hard flow - ORC. Now that we’ve checked in all of Nathan’s NEON VOLK kernels to GNU Radio, we mostly cover all of the cases where we were benefiting from ORC. Bottom line, at this point in the development, use hard float. We will likely stop all support of soft float images in the future. > Thanks, > > Sean Nowlan u-boot.bin != BOOT.BIN. I know it feels like it should, but it’s missing the first stage boot loader (fsbl). There are licensing issues with distributing that ourselves. I might have the details slightly wrong since it’s been a while. But basically, follow the instructions on the Zynq wiki you linked to above to build your of fsbl file and properly build your own boot.bin. Then DON’T LOSE THAT FILE. That’ll be pretty much permanent for your uses. You did the right thing with the device tree file, as that might be updated and changed and we’ll continue providing that. Tom ---
**Author:** ![NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f05b48/32.png) [@NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/NowlanS_Sean)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/zedboard-gnu-radio-image-boot-problems/231880/3 "2014-09-03T23:54:53Z")
On 09/03/2014 04:30 PM, Nowlan, Sean wrote: > I’m trying to boot a ZedBoard with the GNU Radio image here: > [http://gnuradio.org/data/sdk/zedboard\_armv7a-hf-vfp-neon/](http://gnuradio.org/data/sdk/zedboard_armv7a-hf-vfp-neon/). I picked the hard float > image even though the tutorial points to the soft float image > ([http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Zynq](http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Zynq)). I don’t know why I’d > want the soft float image since using the FPU will be much faster. Hard float isn’t that much faster. It referes to the ARM abi used for function calls. Hard float lets you return floats in NEON registers, which makes functions that return floats faster. Pretty much everything else is the same. So, it is a win, but not huge, except for certain cases. Philip ---
**Author:** ![NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f05b48/32.png) [@NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/NowlanS_Sean)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/zedboard-gnu-radio-image-boot-problems/231880/4 "2014-09-04T16:51:40Z")
On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 5:53 PM, Philip B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Hard float isn’t that much faster. It referes to the ARM abi used for > function calls. Hard float lets you return floats in NEON registers, > which makes functions that return floats faster. Pretty much everything > else is the same. So, it is a win, but not huge, except for certain cases. > > Philip Nathan and I have both done some tests. You can get a few percent improvement in speed with just hard float. That by itself was not a compelling enough reason to drop the ORC support. It was only because of the NEON VOLK proto-kernels that made the change worth it. I had some data that I was going to publish at one point, but it was too confused with different development stages so that the comparisons wouldn’t be clean or clear. Tom ---
**Author:** ![NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f05b48/32.png) [@NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/NowlanS_Sean)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2014, 8:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/zedboard-gnu-radio-image-boot-problems/231880/5 "2014-09-04T20:15:39Z")
On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Tom R. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > I’d want the soft float image since using the FPU will be much faster. > > > Nathan and I have both done some tests. You can get a few percent That’s correct, in my VOLK tests the only time hardfloat made any difference was when the compiler inserted a call to its runtime library for generic code. I expect this will come up in the VOLK and/or embedded working group sessions at grcon. ---
**Author:** ![NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f05b48/32.png) [@NowlanS\_Sean](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/NowlanS_Sean)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2014, 10:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/zedboard-gnu-radio-image-boot-problems/231880/6 "2014-09-04T22:11:58Z")
On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:30 PM, Nowlan, Sean \ wrote: I’m trying to boot a ZedBoard with the GNU Radio image here: [http://gnuradio.org/data/sdk/zedboard\_armv7a-hf-vfp-neon/](http://gnuradio.org/data/sdk/zedboard_armv7a-hf-vfp-neon/). I picked the hard float image even though the tutorial points to the soft float image ([http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Zynq](http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gnuradio/wiki/Zynq)). I don’t know why I’d want the soft float image since using the FPU will be much faster. There’s a bug in ORC on hard float. So we were looking into soft float + ORC or hard flow - ORC. Now that we’ve checked in all of Nathan’s NEON VOLK kernels to GNU Radio, we mostly cover all of the cases where we were benefiting from ORC. Bottom line, at this point in the development, use hard float. We will likely stop all support of soft float images in the future. I followed the directions at the aforementioned tutorial except I renamed “u-boot.bin” to “BOOT.BIN” and “uImage-zedboard-zynq7.dtb” to “devicetree.dtb”. I could not get the board to boot. The USB-to-UART triggers cdc\_acm to load /dev/ttyACM0 on my Linux host PC, but there is no activity over serial. I’m confident the board is not dead because I am able to boot from the preloaded SD card that came with the ZedBoard development kit. Does anybody have any suggestions? It seems like either some step is missing or I am misunderstanding a step in the tutorial. Thanks, Sean Nowlan u-boot.bin != BOOT.BIN. I know it feels like it should, but it’s missing the first stage boot loader (fsbl). There are licensing issues with distributing that ourselves. I might have the details slightly wrong since it’s been a while. But basically, follow the instructions on the Zynq wiki you linked to above to build your of fsbl file and properly build your own boot.bin. Then DON’T LOSE THAT FILE. That’ll be pretty much permanent for your uses. You did the right thing with the device tree file, as that might be updated and changed and we’ll continue providing that. Tom Ok. I was afraid of that, but it’s not clear in the tutorial. Also, I see the process for building BOOT.BIN in Appendix A. I think things would be more clear if the “Pre-built” wiki section had a paragraph explicitly referring to Appendix A as a necessary step before using pre-built images (second stage boot loader, kernel, boot parameters, rootfs, etc.) for everything else. In my mind it seemed like that step only applied if doing a full OpenEmbedded build. Thanks! Sean