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Cross-Compiler Setup for M2Sim

Overview

M2Sim requires ELF binaries for execution. macOS compiles to Mach-O by default, so we need a cross-compiler to build benchmarks that can run in the simulator.

Option 1: Homebrew aarch64-elf-gcc (Recommended)

Installation

# Install the cross-compiler toolchain
brew install aarch64-elf-gcc

# Verify installation
aarch64-elf-gcc --version

Note: This installs aarch64-elf-binutils as a dependency.

Usage

# Compile to bare-metal ELF
aarch64-elf-gcc -O2 -static -nostdlib -o program.elf program.c

# Or with newlib for C library support
aarch64-elf-gcc -O2 -static -specs=nosys.specs -o program.elf program.c

Pros

  • Official Homebrew package
  • Stable, well-maintained
  • Includes binutils (objdump, etc.)

Cons

  • Large installation (~1GB with dependencies)
  • Build time if not bottled

Option 2: LLVM/Clang Cross-Compile

If you have LLVM installed:

# Use clang with explicit target
clang --target=aarch64-elf -O2 -static -nostdlib -o program.elf program.c

Note: May need additional linker configuration for bare-metal targets.

Option 3: ARM GNU Toolchain

ARM provides official embedded toolchains:

brew install --cask gcc-arm-embedded
# or
brew install gcc-aarch64-embedded

Verification

After installation, verify:

# Check compiler
aarch64-elf-gcc --version

# Check it produces ELF
echo 'int main() { return 0; }' > test.c
aarch64-elf-gcc -O2 -static -nostdlib -e main -o test.elf test.c
file test.elf  # Should show "ELF 64-bit LSB executable, ARM aarch64"
rm test.c test.elf

CoreMark Cross-Compilation

Once installed, use this to compile CoreMark:

cd benchmarks/coremark
aarch64-elf-gcc -O2 -static -DITERATIONS=10000 \
  -DCOMPILER_FLAGS=\"-O2\" \
  core_list_join.c core_main.c core_matrix.c core_state.c core_util.c \
  -o coremark.elf

References