SYS/BIOS 6.37.00.20 GA Release Notes

This release note is divided into the following sections:

Introduction, Documentation, What's New, Upgrading And Compatibility Information, Host Support, Dependencies, Device Support, Validation Information, Known Issues, Benchmarks, Versioning, Technical Support And Product Updates,

Introduction

A number of tools and libraries that were provided as an integrated part of DSP/BIOS 5.x releases must now be downloaded separately to obtain a functional solution. It is essential for even experienced DSP/BIOS users to refer to the Getting Started Guide and to the Upgrading and Compatibility Information section for further details.

Documentation

The following documentation is provided with this release. These documents are also available via the CCS Eclipse help table of contents.

• SYS/BIOS Getting Started Guide
• SYS/BIOS Quick Start Guide (MSP430)
• SYS/BIOS User's Guide
• SYS/BIOS APIs (cdoc) (Indexed and Searchable within CCS/Eclipse Help)
• Migrating a DSP/BIOS 5 Application to SYS/BIOS
• Static Analysis Reports

• SYS/BIOS Manifest and License

• www.ti.com/sysbios
• SYS/BIOS wiki pages

Release notes from previous releases are also available in the release notes archive directory.

What's New

SYS/BIOS 6.37.00.20 GA Release (this release).

• Adds Cortex-A9 support (uses Linaro/gcc tools)
• Adds IAR support for Cortex-M3, M4 and M4F devices
• GCC semi-hosting support for Cortex-M3, M4 and M4F (requires CCSv6 beta 2 or later)
• Several Cortex-A optimizations and improvements (done together with adding A9 support)
• Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Upgrading and Compatibility Information

• Binary compatible.   You can use libraries built with 6.35.0x with 6.37.00. 
  

• Binary Compatibility.  A few fields have been added to several data structures which means that SYS/BIOS 6.34 is not binary compatible SYS/BIOS 6.33.  The safest thing to do is to rebuild all source code against the .h files provided with SYS/BIOS 6.34. Note that only the following externally visible structures have changed:  Task_Params, Task_Struct, HeapMem_Params.   If your source code does not use these structures directly, then you may not need to recompile.  Be careful when using other libraries from other sources  (like the NDK stack or other libraries provided with an SDK or otherwise).  These libraries should also be recompiled against SYS/BIOS 6.34.
  
• MSP430 Clock.  The Clock module for the MSP430 now uses the periodic timer mode (TickMode_PERIODIC) by default.   SYS/BIOS 6.33 used TickMode_DYNAMIC.   You can change this default using the ‘Clock.tickMode’ configuration parameter in your .cfg file.  TickMode_DYNAMIC minimizes the need for periodic interrupts, but adds some constraints on the application.  See https://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/SYS/BIOS_for_the_MSP430#Clock_Tick_Suppression for more information about MSP430 clock modes.
  
• This release requires XDC 3.24.01 or later.
  
• This release requires Arm codegen 5.0.1 or later.   5.0.1 will be provided with CCSv5.3 and is available separately for use in CCSv5.2.
  
  

• The default directory for SYS/BIOS is changing to match CCSv5.1.0, "C:\ti" is the new default directory (SDOCM00086138 -- BIOS installer needs to change its default directory to match CCSv5.1.0)
• RTDX has been removed and is no longer supported.  Only stop mode is supported for Realtime Analysis (RTA).

• For TI816X devices (ie Netra), GPTimers 3 and 7 have been removed from the list of usable timers due to anomalous behavior when clocked at 32KHz resulting in two interrupts for every period when run in continuous mode.
  
• We are planning to remove support for the whole_program and whole_program_debug profiles because of build time problems and compatibility problems when using different compiler versions.   SYS/BIOS 6.32 will output a warning message when the whole_program or whole_program_debug profiles are used.   We are now providing pre-built libraries which can be selected via the BIOS.libType configuration parameter (see section 7.6.1 of the BIOS User's Guide for details).   The instrumented library contains Assert() and Log statements.  The non-instrumented library does not.   The custom library can be used to build a custom BIOS library which will be built using #define constants reflecting some of the key configuration parameters from your application .cfg file.   The non-instrumented library and custom library should give you similar or better performance to SYS/BIOS 6.31 using the whole_program profile.
• .taskStackSection has been renamed – The .taskStackSection linker section has been renamed to be a subsection of .far, .bss, or .ebss as appropriate for the given target.  This allows BIOS to be used with CCS-supplied linker .cmd files for the MSP430, Stellaris and 28x devices.  This section is used to place the stacks for tasks created at configuration time.   The new name is provided in the Task.defaultStackSection field in your configuration.  If you reference ‘.taskStackSection’ in your .cfg file, you should change the code to use Task.defaultStackSection. 

• Added an assert to GateMutex.   GateMutex_enter() calls BIOS_getThreadType() to validate the calling context.  GateMutex_enter() will raise an assert if called from Hwi or Swi context.   GateMutex internally calls Semaphore_pend/post to provide the mutex.  Semaphore_pend() cannot be called from Swi or Hwi context if the semaphore is not available.  Note that a GateMutex gate is registered with the TI compiler’s RTS library to make the RTS library reentrant.   Calling printf() and a few other RTS functions from Swi or Hwi context will yield this assert.   
• This assert check will catch bad code that could cause a rare crash.  While not recommended, this assert can be disabled by adding ‘GateMutex.common$.diags_ASSERT = Diags.ALWAYS_OFF;’ to your .cfg file.
• Text footprint on the C6x increased by 2K due to Exception.enablePrint default now being set to ‘true’ by default.  This enables better diagnostic output when an exception occurs.  You can set this config parameter to ‘false’ to save memory and get a shorter, less informative diagnostic string.
• MMU and Cache are now enabled by default for Arm9.
• Arm9 applications will have larger data/text footprint due to the 16kbyte MMU table and MMU initialization code. 
• Moved ti.sysbios.arm.Cache module to ti.sysbios.arm.arm9.Cache since this module is Arm9-specific.  .cfg scripts will have to be updated to use new name (‘ti.sysbios.family.arm.arm9.Cache’) and .c files will have to change to use ‘#include <ti/sysbios/arm/arm9/Cache.h>’.
• Use BIOS_exit() rather than System_exit() if called from ISR or Swi context to avoid Assert() in GateMutex module.   BIOS_exit() and System_exit() both flush the SysMin trace buffer using CIO.  The CIO library is protected by GateMutex.
  

DA830 ROM

• BIOS 6.30 and 6.31 cannot be used with the DA830 ROM.  BIOS 6.21 is the preferred version for DA830 ROM.

The 'ti.sdo.io' and 'ti.sdo.utils' packages are no longer provided with SYS/BIOS

• These packages are now provided in a separate "IPC" product.  Users of these packages simply need to add this other product directory to their package path (XDCPATH) to build their applications.

The ti.sysbios.ipc package and its modules have been deprecated

• The Semaphore, Event, and Mailbox modules were moved from the ti.sysbios.ipc package into the ti.sysbios.knl package. Please update your applications to use the ti.sysbios.knl package versions of the Semaphore, Event, and Mailbox modules. Using the ipc package versions of these modules will result in build warnings. In a subsequent release of BIOS, using any module within the ipc package will result in a build error.

   
The ti.sysbios.family.arm.m3.Exception module has been deprecated

• The ti.sysbios.family.arm.m3.Exception module functionality has been enhanced and merged into the ti.sysbios.family.arm.m3.Hwi module. Please update your applications to use the ti.sysbios.family.arm.m3.Hwi module to configure exception handling. By default, exceptions will be reported to CIO with an Error message. Details of the exception can be seen using Hwi module's "Exception" ROV view. At the expense of additonal code size, some of this detailed information can ALSO be routed to the CIO console by setting the Hwi.enableException configuration flag to true.

Placing of sections using MEM configs is no longer supported (ie MEM.TEXTSEG is unsupported)

• All of the legacy MEM memory segment placment functionality has been removed. Legacy BIOS users must use Program.sectMap to place memory sections.

The ti.sysbios.family.c64p.Cache.initSize configuration item is no longer supported

• The ti.sysbios.family.c64p.Cache module no longer supports setting the Cache sizes. These settings are now managed within a platform and can be configured using the platform wizard.

SYS/BIOS no longer contains all the tools and objects you will need

• The XDC tools now provide the SYS/BIOS configuration tools and Platform support. XDC also includes a minimal run-time environment that provides the LOG, System, Asserts, Error handling, Timestamp, and Memory Allocation APIs that will be used by SYS/BIOS applications.  Please refer to the Getting Started Guide on where to download the XDC tools and run-time.

• SYS/BIOS has different APIs compared to those in DSP/BIOS 5.x. Configuration scripts are also incompatible between the two releases.  To provide easy migration of DSP/BIOS 5.x applications, an API compatibility layer is provided along with a conversion tool that converts configuration scripts to work with XDC and SYS/BIOS.  The API compatibility layer provides 100% C source code compatibility with the exception of a few APIs that are no longer supported.  For more complete details of migrating DSP/BIOS 5.x applications and configuration scripts, please refer to Migrating a DSP/BIOS 5 Application to SYS/BIOS.

• As mentioned above, some APIs previously supported in DSP/BIOS 5.x releases will no longer be supported in this release or the compatibility layer.  Complete details are provided in the Migration document referenced above.

Host Support

• Supported Operating Systems
• Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows XP
• Linux [RH4], Ubuntu [10.04, 12.04, 12.10, 13.04]

Dependencies

• Minimum Required Software Versions
  • Code Composer Studio v5.4.x or later (CCSv5.5.0 recommended)
  • TI Code Generation Tools
    • C28X version 6.1.0 or later
    • C6X version 7.3.1 or later
    • ARM version 4.9.1 or later,  M3/M4 version 5.0.1 or later
    • MSP430 version 4.1.0 or later
    • XDCTools 3.24.06.63 or later
  • GNU Code Generation Tools (for ARM only)
  • ARM version gcc-arm-none-eabi-4_7-2012q4 or later 
  • XDCtools 3.25.04.88 or later
  • IAR Code Generation Tools (for Arm Cortex-M and MSP430 only)
  • ARM version 6.60 
  • MSP430 version 5.60.1
  • XDCtools 3.25.04.88 or later
• Required Hardware
  • See Device Support Section below.

Device Support

Validation Information

Click here for the list of compilers used to build and validate this release (scroll down to Supported Targets section).

Known Issues

The following issues are known to affect this release:

• GCC semi-hosting support for Cortex-M3/M4/M4F does not work in CCSv5.4 or CCSv5.5.   Semi-hosting support for Cortex-M devices will be added to a future version of CCS.
• Titles for "Getting Started Guide" and "User's Guide" still refer to SYS/BIOS 6.35.  These are the correct documents for this release.  They will be updated in a later release.

Benchmarks

• Timing and Size Benchmarks

Versioning

This product's version follows a version format, M.mm.pp.bb, where M is a single digit Major number, mm is 2 digit minor number, pp is a 2 digit patch number, and b is an unrestricted set of digits used as an incrementing build counter.

To support multiple side-by-side installations of the product, the product version is encoded in the top level directory (e.g. bios_6_30_00_00).

Subsequent releases of patch upgrades will be identified by the patch number, ex. SYS/BIOS 6.30.01.15 with directory bios_6_30_01_15. Typically, these patches only include critical bug fixes.

Please note that version numbers and compatibility keys are NOT the same. For an explanation of compatibility keys, please refer to the 'Upgrade and Compatibility Information' section.

Technical Support and Product Updates

• SYS/BIOS software downloads
• TI-RTOS Forum 
• TI E2E Community

Last updated: October 29, 2013 Build Ver: 6.37.00.20 Rev: m20