SYS/BIOS 6.30.01.33 Patch 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

SYS/BIOS 6.30.01.33 is a Patch release of SYS/BIOS 6.30.

SYS/ BIOS is a real-time operating system that provides pre-emptive deterministic multithreading. The SYS/BIOS 6.x releases introduce a completely new SYS/BIOS kernel and toolset. The SYS/BIOS 6.x releases include numerous major enhancements, including completely new kernel APIs. They also include compatibility layers and tooling to facilitate easy porting of applications developed on DSP/BIOS 5.x releases.

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.

Please read the Getting Started Guide for help installing and setting up your environment to use SYS/BIOS 6.30.01.33.

back to top

Documentation

The following documentation is provided with this release:

SYS/BIOS 6 Getting Started Guide
SYS/BIOS 6 User's Guide
SYS/BIOS APIs (cdoc)
Migrating a DSP/BIOS 5 Application to SYS/BIOS 6
All of this documentation is available via the CCSv4 Eclipse help system. The APIs (cdoc) is indexed and searchable via Eclipse help.

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

What's New

SYS/BIOS 6.30.01.33 Patch Release (this release).

This release is based on DSP/BIOS 6.30.00.

Notes on this release:

The product name has been changed to SYS/BIOS to reflect the support for a wider set of embedded processors (i.e., MSP430, Cortex-M3, Arm9).
Source code in the product is now licensed using the Open-Source BSD license.
This release contains support for MSP430.
- Size and timing benchmarks are provided (see benchmark link in this document for more information).
- The DSP/BIOS Getting Started Guide describes how to build the examples.
Numerous minor bug fixes, new device support, and enhancements as listed in the Defects list below

Defects Fixed:
    ID                               Headline
    SDOCM00071405    Need ROV for EventCombiner
    SDOCM00071248    Minor updates needed to "Rebuilding SYS/BIOS" chapter in User Guide
    SDOCM00071160    ti.sysbios.benchmarks is missing from cdoc table of contents (+ minor change to latency benchmark)
    SDOCM00071154    Add filters to example templates based on supported targets and platforms.
    SDOCM00071108    The @a(HeapMem) in HeapMem.restore() etc. is redundant in new cdoc
    SDOCM00071095    xgconf product view is not working for BIOS 6.30 (typo in Product.xdc)
    SDOCM00071065    (Child) BCACHE_wait() contains a hole which can cause an exception if MPC is enabled
    SDOCM00070979    Update CDOC for 2nd level MMU descriptor for ARM9 devices
    SDOCM00070974    release notes don't show compiler version correctly (uses M,S,R,P instead of 7.0.1)
    SDOCM00070677    .cinit sectMap code generated by conversion tool is incorrect
    SDOCM00070513    c66 Cache needs mfence instruction
    SDOCM00070410    update BIOS examples to include "disable Assert()" and other common options (commented out for easy access and use)
    SDOCM00070364    mask math in timer64/Timer.xs doesn't work if ntimers >= 16 (Shannon)
    SDOCM00064359    (MSP430) Resolve a common platform/catalog approach, and implement
    SDOCM00046568    Examples with unique module / config requirements should have their own cfg files

Upgrading and Compatibility Information

SYS/BIOS 6.x releases have many significant changes from DSP/BIOS 5.x. It is important to understand the information below in order to successfully use SYS/BIOS 6.x and to migrate applications from DSP/BIOS 5.x.

DA830 ROM

BIOS 6.30 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.

Migrating DSP/BIOS 5.x applications to SYS/BIOS 6.x

SYS/BIOS 6.x 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 6.x. 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 6.

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 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista
Linux [RH4], Ubuntu [10.1]

Dependencies

Required Software
- Code Composer Studio v4.2 Beta or higher
- Code Generation Tools
  - C28X version 5.2.3
  - C6X version 7.0.2
  - ARM version 4.6.3
  - MSP430 version 3.3.0B2 or higher
- XDCtools 3.20.00.40 or higher
- IPC 1.21.00.14 or higher
Required Hardware
- See Device Support Section below.

Device Support

Click here for the list of supported devices.

back to top

Validation Information

This release was built and validated using the following components:

Click here for validation information.

Known Issues

The following issues are known to affect this release:

    ID                               Headline
    SDOCM00071397    Review supported device list in release notes - msp430 device list is missing
    SDOCM00071153    Need examples for 28x
    SDOCM00069680    BIOS legacy app note updates for 6.30
    SDOCM00070088    BIOS dispatcher should set TSR.XEN so that exceptions that happen during ISR context will be caught immediately
    SDOCM00068360    No data displayed in RTA Exec Graph when attaching to running target
    SDOCM00064397    RTA crashes CCS 4.1 after a few reset/reload with USB emulator
    SDOCM00046756    BIOS6 doesn't have MPC module

Benchmarks

For a full description of Benchmarks please see the appendices in the SYS/BIOS 6 User's Guide.

Timing and Size Benchmarks
The Timing Benchmarks for the MSP430 target have not been determined. The published numbers for MSP430 were inadvertantly duplicated from the M3 timing benchmarks.

Versioning

All releases have 4 digits (M.mm.pp.bb). This includes GA and pre-releases (engineering, alpha/EA, beta, etc.). Pre-releases are denoted with a suffix (e.g. 6.30.00.00-eng or 6.30.00.10-beta).

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

Please contact softwaresupport@ti.com for technical support.
TI E2E Community

Last updated: June 28, 2010 Build Ver: 6.30.01.33 Rev: f33