Padding after the IPL

The IPL can scan the entire combined image for the presence of the startup header, but this slows the boot process. Instead, you can have the IPL scan through the range between two addresses and place the startup header at the first (or starting) address.

Specifying a final IPL size that's larger than the actual IPL lets you modify the IPL (and change its length) without having to adjust the scanning addresses with each change. This way, the starting address of the OS image is independent of the IPL size.

CAUTION:
You must specify a padding size greater than the total size of the IPL to prevent the rest of the data in the combined image file from partially overwriting your IPL.

Padding before .ifs images

If your combined image includes one or more flash (.efs) images, specify an alignment equal to the block size of your system's onboard flash. The optimized design of the flash filesystem driver requires that all .efs images begin at a block boundary. When you build your combined image, the IDE adds padding to align the beginning of each .efs image with the address of the next block boundary.