AVNET RZBoard V2L Evaluation and Development Kits User Guide

Software Requirements: Ubuntu 64-bit OS, version 20.04 LTS (Desktop or Server version). You can also run Ubuntu 64-bit OS on a virtual machine or in a docker container.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Who owns the intellectual property of RZBoard-Linux-Yocto-Development-Guide V2.8?
A: The RZBoard V2L and its related intellectual property are owned by Avnet.

Q: What is the recommended method for building the Linux image and boot files on RZBoard?
A: Two methods are detailed in the document:
Yocto build and Standalone build. Renesas recommends using the Yocto build method for simplicity.

Q: What are the hardware and software requirements for setting up the build environment?
A: At least 300GB of disk space and 8GB of RAM are required for hardware. Software requirements include Ubuntu 64-bit OS, version 20.04 LTS.

Copyright Statement:

The RZBoard V2L and its related intellectual property are owned by Avnet.

Avnet has the copyright of this document and reserves all rights. Any part of the document should not be modified, distributed or duplicated in any form without written permission issued by Avnet.

Disclaimer:

Avnet does not make warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the program source code, software and documents provided along with the products, and including, but not limited to,warranties of fitness for a particular purpose; The entire risk as to the quality or performance of the program is with the user of these products.

Revision History

Version	Note	Author	Release Date
v1.0	Initial version	Lily	2022/07/08
v2.0	Update Yocto Project to 3.1.14	Lily	2022/09/28
v2.1	Procedure and readability improvements	Peter	2022/11/08
v2.2	1. Description of reorganizing structure of Yocto source code 2. Script *make_rz_uboot.sh* is now provided on github	Lily	2022/11/28
v2.3	Miscellaneous document readability edits	Peter	2022/12/05
V2.4	1. Provided direct links to Renesas support packages 2. Git config is unneeded	Evan	2023/04/05
V2.5	1. Updated link to Renesas codec support package	Evan	2023/04/26
V2.6	1. Make updates based on the updates of Renesas.	Lily	2023/08/09
V2.7	1. Make updates based on the updates of Renesas:Updated Yocto Project to 3.1.21, Kernel version to 5.10.175	Lily	2023/10/31
V2.8	1. Make updates based on the updates of Renesas:Updated Yocto Project to 3.1.31, Kernel version to 5.10.201(Updated the version of nodejs to 18.17.1)	Lily	2024/10/29

Summary

RZBoard is a development SBC board designed and manufactured by Avnet, based on RZ/V2L 64bit Arm A55 MPUs with DRP-AI acceleration from Renesas Electronics.

RZBoard is fitted with a Renesas RZ/V2L dual-core MPU (p/n R9A77G054L2)
This document describes key aspects of development on RZBoard using Yocto Linux

Note: Two methods are detailed in this document for building the Linux image and boot files:

Yocto build (simpler than the standalone method)
Standalone build

For simplicity, Renesas recommends using the Yocto build method
https://renesas.info/wiki/RZ-G/RZG_yocto#Online_vs_Offline_Yocto_build

Build Instructions

Setup Build Environment

To setup the build environment the following resources are required:

Hardware: At least 300GB of disk space and 8GB of RAM

Software: Ubuntu 64-bit OS, 20.04 LTS version (Ubuntu Desktop or Ubuntu Server version).
You could also run the Ubuntu 64-bit OS on virtual machine or in docker container.

The following packages are required for the development environment.

The required packages can be installed using the bash script below:

Fetch Source Code

Download Renesas software packages
Due to licensing restrictions on the Renesas website, users are required to download in person. The links have been provided below:

#	Package Name	Version	File to be downloaded
1	RZ/V Verified Linux Package	V3.0.6	RTK0EF0045Z0024AZJ-v3.0.6.zip
2	RZ MPU Graphics Library	Evaluation Version V1.2.2	RTK0EF0045Z13001ZJ-v1.2.2_EN.zip
3	RZ MPU Codec Library	Evaluation Version V1.2.2	RTK0EF0045Z15001ZJ-v1.2.2_EN.zip
4	RZ/V2L DRP-AI Support Package	V7.50	r11an0549ej0750-rzv2l-drpai-sp.zip
5	RZ/V2L Multi-OS Package	V2.10	r01an7254ej0210-rzv2l-multi-os-pkg.zip

After downloading these packages, copy them to the home directory ( ~/ ) to prepare for the next step.

Note: The “Evaluation” packages contain a time limitation that stops the software after a few hours.

For more information please refer to RZ/V2L Wiki.

Extract Renesas software packages
Download a script to extract the file.

Run the script to generate yocto_rzboard/ directory.

Yocto Build of BSP
Setting build environment and Build

After the build has successfully completed, the output files are deployed in:
~/yocto_rzboard/build/tmp/deploy/images/rzboard/

Flash_Writer_SCIF_rzboard.mot	FlashWriter image tool
bl2_bp-rzboard.srec	BL2 bootloader file in S-record format
fip-rzboard.srec	BL31 bootloader plus u-Boot packages in S-record format
avnet-core-image-rzboard- xxxx.rootfs.wic	System image, this includes: Linux kernel, DTB and root file system.
Image	Kernel image
rzboard.dtb	RZBoard device tree binary
overlays/rzboard-*.dtbo	RZBoard device tree overlay binary
avnet-core-image-rzboard- xxxx.rootfs.tar.bz2	System image compressed archive file

Standalone Build of Kernel and u-Boot

This chapter describes how to build u-Boot and the kernel using either Yocto SDK or ARM GCC in a standalone (offline) environment.

Cross-compile toolchain
The cross-compile tool chain that is used, can be ARM GCC or Yocto SDK.

ARM GCC
Download the toolchain for the A-profile architecture on arm Developer GNU-A Downloads page. It is recommended to use the 10.3 version for this release. You can download the “gcc-arm-10.3-2021.07-x86_64-aarch64-none-linux-gnu.tar.xz “, and decompress the file into a local directory.
Execute the following command to check that the toolchain can be directly run.To compile a project with ARM GCC, first set the environment with the following commands before building:
Yocto SDK
Generate an SDK from the Yocto Project build environment with the following command after generating the image in the previous chapter.

The SDK will be generated under: ~/yocto_rzboard/build/tmp/deploy/sdk/./poky-glibc-x86_64-avnetcore-image-aarch64-rzboard-toolchain-3.1.31.sh

Execute this script to install the SDK. The default location is /opt but it can be placed anywhere on the host machine.

When using Yocto SDK to compile a project, first execute the following command to configure the environment variables:

Build u-Boot in a standalone environment

To build a bootloader for RZBoard, the user should get cloned different repositories, such as renesas-u-Boot.git, trusted-firmware-a.git and boot parameter code. After compiling the code of each repository, the user has to perform some steps to generate the final boot image.

A shell script named make_rz_uboot.sh is provided to simplify these processes. So the user can download the all code and build with this script. The boot image build steps are as follows:

Download the bash script into the tmp directory and change the file mode:

Execute the script with parameter -g to download the code first:

Then execute the script with parameter -rz to start the build process:

The following outputs are generated by default in the tmp directory:

bl2_bp_rzboard.srec
fip_rzboard.srec

Please refer to RZBoard-Linux-Yocto-Usermanual.pdf to update these boot images to the board.

Build Kernel in a standalone environment

Get the Linux source code

Check that the environment variables are correctly set:

Build the kernel sources

Execute the ‘ls’ command to view the Image, dtb file and dtbo files after compilation.

Execute the following command to compile the kernel modules, and install the modules to rootfs in the current directory.

Flash-Programming and Board Operation

To program the generated new Bootloader and System image files into RZBoard’s eMMC memory, use the procedure described in the RZBoard-Linux-Yocto-UserManual (This also detailed in section 12 of the RZBoard Hardware User Guide)
For guidance on power-up RZBoard, the boot-up process, and how to exercise the supported BSP features of RZBoard, please refer to RZBoard-Linux-Yocto-UserManual

All Avnet documents are accessible via the RZBoard product page at https://www.avnet.me/rzboard

Appendix

Hardware Documents
For hardware details please refer to:

RZBoard Hardware User Guide

RZBoard Block Diagram

Software Documents and Links
RZBoard supports Yocto Linux, for additional information, please refer to the following documents accessible from the RZBoard product page at https://www.avnet.me/rzboard

RZBoard Linux Yocto User Manual

Describes how to reflash RZBoard and aspects of the BSP functionality
RZBoard Linux Yocto Development Guide
Detailed guidance on how to rebuild the Linux system image using Yocto (this document)

RZ/G2 Group Linux BSP Porting Guide (this is applicable to RZ/V2L)
https://www.renesas.com/us/en/document/mas/rzg2-group-linux-bsp-porting-guide
RZ/V and RZ/G key Wiki pages on Renesas.info

https://renesas.info/wiki/RZ-V
https://renesas.info/wiki/RZ-G
https://renesas.info/wiki/RZ-G/RZG_kernel

https://renesas.info/wiki/RZ-G/RZG_DeviceTree
https://renesas.info/wiki/RZ-G/RZ-G2_BSP
https://renesas.info/wiki/RZ-G/RZ-G2_BSP_Porting

Contact Information

Product Webpage: https://www.avnet.me/rzboard

https://www.avnet.me/rzboard

Documents / Resources

AVNET RZBoard V2L Evaluation and Development Kits [pdf] User Guide
RZBoard V2L, RZBoard V2L Evaluation and Development Kits, Evaluation and Development Kits, Development Kits, Kits

References

User Manual

AVNET RZBoard V2L Evaluation and Development Kits

Product Usage Instructions