How to use xobjdump to inspect and manipulate XE files

• version

  1.0.1

• scope

  Example.

  This code is provided as example code for a user to base their code on.

• description

  How to use xobjdump to inspect and manipulate XE files

• boards

  Unless otherwise specified, this example runs on the SliceKIT Core Board, but can easily be run on any XMOS device by using a different XN file.

The xTIMEcomposer tools contain the xobjdump utility, which you can use to inspect, and potentially update, the contents of XE files. For example, compile the following multicore program using the SLICEKIT-L16 target:

#include <platform.h>

int f() {
  return 0;
}

int main() {
  par {
    on tile[0]: f();
    on tile[1]: f();
  }
  return 0;
}

An XE file is an XMOS specific container format for a number of resources that go toward making up an xCORE multicore binary. Most importantly, it contains one or more ELF files per tile. To see the contents of the resulting executable, use xobjdump with the –sector-info command line switch:

> xobjdump --sector-info a.xe
a.xe: file format: xcore-xe

Xmos binary sector information: file: a.xe

0: NODEDESC sector, part number: 0x2633
1: NODEDESC sector, part number: 0x2633
2: ELF sector for tile[0] (node "0", tile 0)
3: CALL sector. Address: 0x00000000
4: ELF sector for tile[1] (node "1", tile 0)
5: CALL sector. Address: 0x00000000
6: ELF sector for tile[0] (node "0", tile 0)
7: GOTO sector. Address: 0x00000000
8: ELF sector for tile[1] (node "1", tile 0)
9: GOTO sector. Address: 0x00000000
10: SYSCONFIG sector
11: XN sector
12: PROGINFO sector
13: LASTSEC sector

If you need access to the these contained files, they can be dumped to the file system using the –split command line switch. You can then use standard ELF utilities such as readelf to inspect the contents of the tile specific ELF files.

You can also add and replace sectors in the XE file using xobjdump. See xobjump –help for further details.