Cross GNU ARM Toolchain

Question

As a beginner, I am confused with setting the adequate toolchain (the whole concept in new for me). My goal is to program the ARM Cortex-A9 on the board Zynq 7000 using the Xilinx SDK.

In order to write C project, the SDK wizard automatically selects Cross GNU ARM Toolchain and asks me to select the toolchain name and configure its path.

My questions are:

1. Cross + GNU + ARM toolchain, can anyone explain me the relation between those 3 or what do they mean together ?

When looking for Cross GNU ARM Toolchain I found in the ARM website they cite :

GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain Pre-built GNU toolchain for Arm Cortex-M and Cortex-R processors

2. Does that mean that there is no Cross GNU ARM Toolchain for Cortex-A ? if that the case, so how can we program the processor of the zynq board ?

I may be confusing some concepts, so any hint and clarification would be helpful.

Answer 1

1) Cross - meaning you can compile on architecture A to the machine code of architecture B.
2) GNU - recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix!". A Linux based project focusing on providing free open source software.
3) ARM - processor core architecture. Which is the target architecture for your toolchain.

All together - a toolchain to compile ARM programs on your (non-ARM) computer, provided by GNU.

4) There is Cross GNU ARM Toolchain for Cortex-A. And many. One of these is provided from the ARM website itself: https://developer.arm.com/open-source/gnu-toolchain/gnu-a/downloads

Answer 2

Answering the question 2: here you can find toolchain for ARM Cortex-A family. Note: there is no support for windows64 only for linux or windows32.