GPU internal peripheral

Article purpose

The purpose of this article is to:

• briefly introduce the GPU peripheral and its main features
• indicate the level of security supported by this hardware block
• explain how each instance can be allocated to the three runtime contexts and linked to the corresponding software components
• explain, when necessary, how to configure the GPU peripheral.

Peripheral overview

The GPU peripheral is a dedicated graphics processing unit. It accelerates numerous 3D graphics applications such as graphical user interface (GUI), menu display or animations. It works together with an optimized software stack designed for industry-standard APIs and supporting Android^TM and Linux^® embedded development platforms.

Features

Refer to the STM32MP15 reference manuals for the complete list of features, and to the software components, introduced below, to see which features are implemented.

Security support

The GPU is a non-secure peripheral.

Peripheral usage and associated software

Boot time

The GPU is not used at boot time.

Runtime

Overview

The GPU internal peripheral is allocated to the Arm^® Cortex^®-A7 non-secure core running the Linux^® userland.

Chapter Peripheral assignment describes which peripheral instance can be assigned to which context.

Software frameworks

Domain	Peripheral	Software frameworks			Comment
		Cortex-A7 secure (OP-TEE)	Cortex-A7 non-secure (Linux)	Cortex-M4 (STM32Cube)
Visual	GPU		OpenGL®ES framework

Peripheral configuration

The configuration is applied by the firmware running in the context to which the peripheral is assigned. The configuration can be done alone via the STM32CubeMX tool for all internal peripherals, and then manually completed (particularly for external peripherals), according to the information given in the corresponding software framework article, and in the GPU device tree configuration article for Linux^®.

Peripheral assignment

Internal peripherals assignment table template

| rowspan="1" | Visual
| rowspan="1" | GPU
| GPU
| 
| ☐
|
|
|-

|}

How to go further

Please go through the articles belonging to the GPU category.

References