BeagleBoard/DSP Howto

This article explains how to use the DSP in OMAP3 at BeagleBoard with TI's deliverables. For DSP tool chain see C64x+ DSP.

= Setup =

Kernel driver
In order to use the DSP you would need TI's bridgedriver module on the kernel. You can use my (Felipec's) branch in github that is based on 2.6.32-rc3 and has DSS2 too.

Then build the uImage as usual and install the modules on your rootfs: make INSTALL_MOD_PATH=/media/rootfs modules_install

TI binaries
In order to get the DSP binaries for multimedia processing you need to download TI's OpenMAX IL package. Once you have extracted the tarball you'll have to run the installer TI-OMX-Sample-Firmware-0.3-Linux-x86-Install and accept the license agreement.

You would end up with a bunch of binaries in, copy them to your root filesystem at the same location (/lib/dsp).

ping test
If you want to test the DSP you can try the simple ping test provided in this package.

Just: ./ping.out

If you get an error like: DSPNode_Allocate failed: 0x80008008

Then it's possible that the ping DSP socket node is not loaded. If you use 'baseimage.dof' you need to load it dynamically:

./dynreg.out -r pingdyn_3430.dll64P

On the other hand, 'ddspbase_tiomap3430.dof64P' has the node statically included, so there's no need to do that.

= Running =

On the board use this to load the module:

modprobe bridgedriver base_img=/lib/dsp/baseimage.dof

= Developing =

There are two ways to compile your own DSP nodes; the official one which requires XDC tools, and the simplified one (which I prefer).

Official
Download the dsp-bridge examples from the omapzoom project. Once you extract the main tarball you'll need to extract the individual tarballs on the same directory, so you have something like:

config.bld documents dsp mpu_api mpu_driver product.mak samplemakefile samples

DSP side
You'll need the C6x compiler, extract it in "/opt/dsp/cgt6x-6.0.22". The recommended version is v6.0.22.

You'll need the "DSP/BIOS" package and "RTSC/XDCtools" in order to compile the dsp-brige examples, you can download them from here. Here we will assume they are installed in "/opt/dsp".

Edit "product.mak" to match the version of your tools. Then run: make -f samplemakefile .bridge_samples DD_XDCDIR=/opt/dsp/xdctools_3_10_02 SABIOS_DIR=/opt/dsp/bios_5_33_04/packages DEPOT=/opt/dsp

ARM side
You'll need to prepare a target directory: export target=/tmp/dsp-target mkdir -p $target/lib

Also, build libbridge and libqos: cd mpu_api/src make PREFIX=$target/.. CROSS=arm-linux- install

To build the examples: cd samples/mpu/src make PREFIX=$target/.. CROSS=arm-linux- LIBINCLUDES=$target/lib LDPATH=$target/lib install

All you need will be on '/tmp/dsp-target'.

Simplified
In order to develop dynamic dsp nodes you'll need a C6x compiler (the recommended version is v6.1.7) and doffbuild tools.

doffbuild tools
The only relevant tool is DLLcreate, which can be found in TI's omapzoom site, on the dspbridge_dsp package.

mkdir -p tmp tar -xf dspbridge_dsp.tar.gz -C tmp mv tmp/dsp/bdsptools/packages/ti/dspbridge/dsp/doffbuild /opt/doffbuild rm -rf tmp

Example dsp node
Here is an example dsp node that is simply passing buffers back and forth.

git clone git://github.com/felipec/dsp-dummy.git make DSP_TOOLS=/opt/dsptools DSP_DOFFBUILD=/opt/doffbuild

As a result you'll have two binaries; dummy.dll64P for dsp-side, and dummy for arm-side.

To load the dynamic node: /dspbridge/dynreg.out -r /lib/dsp/dummy.dll64P

Now you can run the dummy test application.

= More information =


 * BeagleBoard/gst-openmax