Running Arm Virtual Hardware FVPs on MacOS

This repository contains scripts that enable Arm Virtual Hardware FVPs to run via Docker on MacOS.

Prerequisites

Install Docker Desktop on Mac.

For commercial use you might require a paid subscription.

Verify proper installation by running the following commands on a terminal:

docker info

If the Docker installation is operational it prints out version information about Client and Server.

Clone the repo

Open a terminal and set the working directory where to store the Fast Model wrapper to. Then run:

git clone https://github.com/Arm-Examples/FVPs-on-Mac.git

This will create the subdirectory FVPs-on-Mac in the current working directory.

Build the Docker wrapper

Run the build script to create the Docker image and populate the bin folder with model wrappers:

./build.sh

Once this succeeds inspect the created bin folder containing a bunch of symlinks to fvp.sh. These wrappers can be used exactly like any native model executable:

./bin/FVP_MPS2_Cortex-M3 --version

Expose models to local environment

Add $(pwd)/FVPs-on-Mac/bin to PATH environment:

export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd)/FVPs-on-Mac/bin

Put this to our ~/.zshrc to make it permanent.

Run Models

Once the setup has been completed one can run Fast Models as they are installed natively.

Some restrictions still apply:

• The users home directory is mapped into the Docker container. Hence, all files accessed (application images, configuration files) must be stored in users home.

• Fast Models require an activated User Based License. Typically, the license cache is stored in ~/.armlm on the host machine and mapped into the container as part of the user home. Thus, the models running inside of the container reuse the license activated on the host machine.

Customization

The Fast Model version and package used for creating the Docker image and wrapper scripts is configured in the file fvprc. If one wants to use another model version or custom package one can just change the values stored in this file.

Alternatively, on can set the model version for example as an environment variable overwriting the default given in fvprc. The following settings can be changed:

• FVP_VERSION: The release version triple (major.minor.patch).
• FVP_BASE_URL: The base download URL to get the model package from.
• FVP_ARCHIVE: The name of the model package archive to fetch.

The download URL is composed as ${FVP_BASE_URL}/${FVP_VERSION}/${FVP_ARCHIVE}. The created Docker image is labeled as fvp:${FVP_VERSION}. Hence, one can keep multiple versions in parallel and switch between them by just setting the environment variable to the required version.

FVP_VERSION=11.22.39 FVP_MPS2_Cortex-M3 --version

Repository structure

The repository contains the following files:

    📦
    ┣ 📂 bin           Created/updated by build.sh script
    ┣ 📄 build.sh      The script to build a Docker image
    ┣ 📄 dockerfile    The recipe used to build the Docker image
    ┣ 📄 fvp.sh        The wrapper script to launch a model executable inside a Docker container
    ┗ 📄 fvprc         The configuration file to customize default model version and package