SPRADU1 September   2026 AM62A3 , AM62A7

 

  1.   1
  2.   Abstract
  3.   Trademarks
  4. 1Introduction
  5. 2Boot Process
    1. 2.1 SPL Boot Process
      1. 2.1.1 R5 SPL
      2. 2.1.2 TF-A+OPTEE+A53 SPL
      3. 2.1.3 U-Boot
      4. 2.1.4 Linux and User Mode
    2. 2.2 SPL Falcon Mode
      1. 2.2.1 Steps
        1. 2.2.1.1 Installing Linux SDK
        2. 2.2.1.2 Adding Falcon Script
        3. 2.2.1.3 Compiling Linux Device Tree
        4. 2.2.1.4 Creating tispl.bin
        5. 2.2.1.5 Creating a Bootable Card
    3. 2.3 Replacing SPL With SBL
      1. 2.3.1 Falcon Boot in SBL
  6. 3Boot Media
  7. 4Operating System Boot Optimization
    1. 4.1 Trimming Operating System
      1. 4.1.1 Using Preset Trimming Configuration
      2. 4.1.2 Custom Trimming
    2. 4.2 Reducing Log Output
  8. 5Userspace Optimization
    1. 5.1 Customizing Boot Services Using Systemd
  9. 6Minimizing Boot Services Using init Script
  10. 7Conclusion
  11. 8References

3 Boot Media

Boot media have a significant influence on the boot speed. On the hardware level, the speed of the boot media affects the movement of image files; on the software level, whether the software configures the media to high-speed mode as early as possible also greatly affects the boot speed. In the SDK documentation, the read and write speed test results for the main boot media are listed.

In SPL mode, the configuration of high-speed mode is located in U-Boot. Therefore, enabling Falcon mode to skip U-Boot will cause related drivers to be called to configure the high-speed mode at the subsequent Linux boot stage. High-speed mode can only accelerate the loading of file system-related images, while the Linux Image and other SPL images are still moved in low-speed mode, with loading time exceeding 1s, which is detrimental to fast boot. The following log records the SPL boot in Falcon mode, which takes almost the same amount of time as the regular SPL process, which skips the U-Boot waiting period. In this boot mode, regardless of the boot media, the system runs in low-speed mode until Linux boots. However, it is important to note that this behavior might be modified in later SDK versions. In future versions, the enabling of the high-speed mode might be moved earlier to speed up the boot process. Therefore, users must verify based on the SDK version.

[2025-07-04 17:26:03.270] U-Boot SPL 2024.04-ti-g29d0c23d67ee (Nov 29 2024 - 11:41:54 +0000)
[2025-07-04 17:26:03.270] SYSFW ABI: 4.0 (firmware rev 0x000a '10.1.8--v10.01.08 (Fiery Fox)')
[2025-07-04 17:26:03.334] SPL initial stack usage: 13568 bytes
[2025-07-04 17:26:03.334] Trying to boot from MMC2
[2025-07-04 17:26:03.461] Warning: Did not detect image signing certificate. Skipping authentication to prevent boot failure. This will fail on Security Enforcing(HS-SE) devices
[2025-07-04 17:26:04.229] Warning: Did not detect image signing certificate. Skipping authentication to prevent boot failure. This will fail on Security Enforcing(HS-SE) devices
[2025-07-04 17:26:04.517] Warning: Did not detect image signing certificate. Skipping authentication to prevent boot failure. This will fail on Security Enforcing(HS-SE) devices
[2025-07-04 17:26:04.566] Warning: Did not detect image signing certificate. Skipping authentication to prevent boot failure. This will fail on Security Enforcing(HS-SE) devices
[2025-07-04 17:26:04.566] Warning: Did not detect image signing certificate. Skipping authentication to prevent boot failure. This will fail on Security Enforcing(HS-SE) devices
[2025-07-04 17:26:04.597] Starting ATF on ARM64 core...

In SBL mode, the boot code is more customized, making it easier for users to modify. The SBL boot log in eMMC mode with Falcon is as follows. At the beginning of the boot process, the boot media is set to high-speed mode at the SBL1 stage. As a result, during the subsequent image loading process, image movement in high-speed mode dramatically reduces the boot time. Before Linux boots, the total time consumed is only 600ms. See the following boot log for details.

 [2025-07-08 10:03:51.246] SYSFW Firmware revision 0xa 
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.246] SYSFW ABI revision 4.0
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.246]
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.262] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] Boot Media : eMMC
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.278] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] Boot Media Clock : 200.000 MHz
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.278] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] Boot Image Size : 163 KB
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.278] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] Cores present :
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.294] mcu-r5f0-0
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.294] r5f0-0
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.294] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] System_init : 36549us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.294] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] Board_init : 0us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.294] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] Drivers_open : 20614us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.310] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] Board_driversOpen : 0us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.310] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] Sciclient Get Version : 10174us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.326] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] MCU R5 Image Load : 7232us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.326] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] DM R5 Image Load : 8510us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.326] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] SBL Total Time Taken : 83081us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.342]
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.342] Image loading done, switching to application ...
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.342] Starting MCU-r5f and 2nd stage bootloader
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.374]
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.374] SYSFW Firmware Version 10.1.8--v10.01.08 (Fiery Fox)
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.390] SYSFW Firmware revision 0xa
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.390] SYSFW ABI revision 4.0
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.390]
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.758] ERROR: Bootloader_verifyMulticoreImage:684: Failed to authenticate Image
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.758] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] Boot Media : eMMC
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.758] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] Boot Media Clock : 200.000 MHz
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.774] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] Boot Image Size : 16589 KB
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.774] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] Cores present :
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.774] hsm-m4f0-0
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.774] r5f0-0
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.774] a530-0
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.774] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] System_init : 1645us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.790] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] Board_init : 0us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.790] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] Drivers_open : 20540us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.806] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] Board_driversOpen : 0us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.806] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] Sciclient Get Version : 10234us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.806] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] HSM Image Load : 5857us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.822] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] DM R5 Image Load : 15695us
[2025-07-08 10:03:51.822] [BOOTLOADER PROFILE] A53 Image Load : 291147us
 [2025-07-08 10:03:51.838] [BOOTLOADER_PROFILE] SBL Total Time Taken : 345123us