SPARC assembly jmp \boot - c

Question

I'll explain the problem briefly. I have a Leon3 board (gr-ut-g99). Using GRMON2 I can load executables at the desired address in the board.
I have two programs. Let's call them A and B. I tried to load both in memory and individually they work.
What I would like to do now is to make the A program call the B program.
Both programs are written in C using a variant of the gcc compiler (the Gaisler Sparc GCC).
To do the jump I wrote a tiny inline assembler function in program A that jumps to a memory address where I loaded the program B.
below a snippet of the program A
unsigned int return_address;
unsigned int * const RAM_pointer = (unsigned int *) RAM_ADDRESS;
printf("RAM pointer set to: 0x%08x \n",(unsigned int)RAM_pointer);
printf("jumping...\n");
__asm__(" nop;" //clean the pipeline
"jmp %1;" // jmp to programB
:"=r" (return_address)
:"r" (RAM_pointer)
);
RAM_ADDRESS is a #define
#define RAM_ADDRESS 0x60000000
The program B is a simple hello world. The program B is loaded at the 0x60000000 address. If I try to run it, it works!
int main()
{
printf ("HELLO! I'M BOOTED! \n");
fflush(stdout);
return 0;
}
What I expect when I run the ProgramA, is to see the "jumping..." message on the console and then see the "HELLO! I'M BOOTED!" from the programB
What happens instead an IU exception.
Below I posted the messages show by grmon2 monitor. I also reported the "inst" report which should show the last operations performed before the exception.
grmon2> run
IU exception (tt = 0x07, mem address not aligned)
0x60004824: 9fc04000 call %g1
grmon2> inst
TIME ADDRESS INSTRUCTION RESULT SYMBOL
407085 600047FC mov %i3, %o2 [600063B8] -
407086 60004800 cmp %i4 [00000013] -
407089 60004804 be 0x60004970 [00000000] -
407090 60004808 mov %i0, %o0 [6000646C] -
407091 6000480C mov %i4, %o3 [00000013] -
407092 60004810 cmp %i4, %l0 [80000413] -
407108 60004814 bleu 0x60004820 [00000000] -
407144 60004818 ld [%i1 + 0x20], %o1 [FFFFFFFF] -
407179 60004820 ld [%i1 + 0x28], %g1 [FFFFFFFF] -
407186 60004824 call %g1 [ TRAP ] -
I also tried to substitute the "jmp" with a "jmpl" or a "call" but it does not worked.
I'm quite confused.
I do not know how to cope well with the problem and therefore I do not know what other information it is necessary to provide.
I can say that, the programB is loaded at 0x60000000 and the entry_point is, of course, 0x60000000. Running directly program B from that entry point it works good!
Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

Looks to me like you did execute the jump, and it got to program B, as evidenced by the addresses of the instructions in the trace buffer. But where you crashed was in stdio trying to print stuff. Stdio makes extensive use of function pointers, and the sequence clearly shows a call instruction with the target address in a register, which indicates use of a function pointer.
I suggest putting fflush(stdout) in program A just before the jump, and this will allow you to see the messages before doing the jump. Then, in program B, instead of using printf, just put some known value in memory that you can examine later via the monitor to verify that it got there.
My guess is that the stdio library has some data or parameter that needs to be set up at the start of the program, and that's not being done or not done properly. Not sure about the platform you are running on, but do you have some sort of debugging or single stepping ability, like in a debugger? If so, just single step through the jump and follow where the program goes.