Specifications

Table Of Contents
ARM Debugger 3 8 A R M S p e c i f i c I m p l e m e n t a t i o n s
©1989-2014 Lauterbach GmbH
Large Physical Address Extension (LPAE)
LPAE is an optional extension for the ARMv7-AR architecture. It allows physical addresses above 32-bit.
The instructions still use 32-bit addresses, but the extended memory management unit can map the address
within a 40-bit physical memory range.
virtual address (32-bit) --> extended MMU --> physical address (40-bit)
It is for example implemented on Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15.
Consequence for Debugging
We have extended only the physical address, because the virtual address is still 32-bit.
Example: Memory dump starting at physical address 0x0280004000.
“A:” = absolute address = physical address.
Unfortunately the above command will result in a bus error (‘????????’) on a real chip because the debug
interface does not support physical accesses beyond the 4GByte. It will work on the TRACE32 instruction
set simulator and on virtual platforms.
In case the Debug Access Port (DAP) of the chip provides an AXI MEM-AP then the debugger can act as a
bus master on the AXI, and you can access the physical memory independent of TLB entries.
However this does not show you the cache contents in case of a write-back cache. For a cache coherent
access you need to set:
Data.dump A:02:80004000
Data.dump AXI:02:80004000
SYStem.Option AXIACEEnable ON