Arria 10 SoC Dev Kit Baremetal HPS examples issue & workflow

Looks like the old U-Boot 2021.04 version you are using may behave differently. Please use the one I mentioned above, the U-Boot 2025.07. You can get the SD card from https://releases.rocketboards.org/2025.10/gsrd/a10_gsrd/sdimage.tar.gz, and add your application.axf to the FAT partition.

If you prefer a small SD card image, that does not have the kernel and rootfs inside, you can build one by using the instructions below. I have used Ubuntu 22.04, but it should work the same also in WSL:

cd $TOP_FOLDER
sudo rm -rf sd_card && mkdir sd_card && cd sd_card
wget https://releases.rocketboards.org/release/2020.11/gsrd/tools/make_sdimage_p3.py
sed -i 's/\"\-F 32\",//g' make_sdimage_p3.py
chmod +x make_sdimage_p3.py
wget https://releases.rocketboards.org/2025.10/gsrd/a10_gsrd/u-boot-splx4.sfp
mkdir fatfs &&  cd fatfs
wget https://releases.rocketboards.org/2025.10/gsrd/a10_gsrd/fit_spl_fpga.itb
wget https://releases.rocketboards.org/2025.10/gsrd/a10_gsrd/u-boot.img
cp $TOP_FOLDER/intel-socfpga-hwlib/examples/A10/Altera-SoCFPGA-HardwareLib-Timer-A10-GNU/application.axf .
cd ..
sudo python3 ./make_sdimage_p3.py -f \
-P u-boot-splx4.sfp,num=3,format=raw,size=10M,type=A2  \
-P fatfs/*,num=1,format=vfat,size=20M \
-s 32M \
-n sdcard_a10.img

If you want faster iteration time, and not to have to udpate the SD card each time you change something, you can download the application.axf over network, via TFTP. I use Linux, but there are Windows TFTP servers too, for example https://pjo2.github.io/tftpd64/. See below an example of such usage, note that you will have to replace server ip with your own value:

=> setenv autoload no
=> dhcp
Speed: 1000, full duplex
BOOTP broadcast 1
BOOTP broadcast 2
BOOTP broadcast 3
DHCP client bound to address 192.168.1.157 (1011 ms)
=> setenv serverip 192.168.1.101
=> tftp 0x10000000 application.axf
Speed: 1000, full duplex
Using ethernet@ff800000 device
TFTP from server 192.168.1.101; our IP address is 192.168.1.157
Filename 'application.axf'.
Load address: 0x10000000
Loading: ##################
         5.1 MiB/s
done
Bytes transferred = 258864 (3f330 hex)
=> bootelf 0x10000000
=> go 0x00100040
## Starting application at 0x00100040 ...
INFO: Frequency = 300000000.
INFO: Period    = 1500 millisecond(s).
INFO: Counter   = 450000000.
RESULT: Example completed successfully.