I copied some lines of the manual, ld, GNU linker: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Every loadable or allocatable output section has two addresses. The first is the VMA, or virtual memory address. This is the address the section will have when the output file is run. The second is the LMA, or load memory address. This is the address at which the section will be loaded. In most cases the two addresses will be the same. An example of when they might be different is when a data section is loaded into ROM, and then copied into RAM when the program starts up (this technique is often used to initialize global variables in a ROM based system). In this case the ROM address would be the LMA, and the RAM address would be the VMA. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How data section is loaded into ROM, while the program has not been started up? (Usually at first we start a program, then sections are loaded into the memory, isn't it?) Please clarify when LMA and VMA addresses are used?
