I've been asked to write a couple of real-life up-and-running articles about working with the Xilinx PPC/Microblaze kit (ML403 board) consisting of a meaty FPGA with PowerPC 405 hard core. I'll have a loaner kit with the option to buy.
Has anyone here worked with this kit? The documentation is a bit vague about what exactly comes with the board, software-wise. Specifically: They talk about "evaluation" versions of numerous cores such as UARTs, Ethernet MACs, etc - what is "evaluation" about them? They also imply that the synthesis software is not a full version.
Does the kit include enough host-side software for me to roll, say, an ADC and a display controller in the FPGA (the included TFT-LCD controller is probably not exactly what I want)? I'd like to be able to build a simple digital spectrum analyzer and signal generator with this board (audio bandwidth).
How easy is it to get the included Linux BSP running - is it plug and play, or is there horror involved? I'd basically just want enough services to get a framebuffer running and start my own process. I was thinking of eCos, but if Linux is ready-rolled...
Any other comments/gotchas/advice to run screaming gratefully accepted.
I have used the kit for the Microblaze not PPC. See here:
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Source code is available.
I was always a little confused about licensing (see the notes on the link above). I guess that they are evaluation versions because you can use the IP in prototype, but need to purchase a license to use them in production, but as I say this is a guess. I only used the lite versions where this is not a problem.
The first big hurdle to overcome is to understand exactly what host side software you need. There were lots of options with no particular reference to what you need to do exactly what. I was very confused as I recall.
Display controller no problem. Not sure about ADC's in FPGA (out of my knowledge area).
One gotcha - be careful about what you rebuild. The first few times I changed a couple of lines of software my rebuild took 2.5 hours! Until I realised how to just build the software and not re-synth the entire device :-)
Although my comments above seem negative this is just because I am highlighting my problems - which all really stem from a lack of experience in this field. I actually love this kit. It is very powerful and flexible. Although the learning curve is very steep the fact that I got my port up and running in about a week (not working on it full time) shows that it cannot be that complex after all once you get into it.
One of my engineers did a Microblaze port of our RTOS recently as far as trouble with toolchain, debugger and indeed soft-core were concerned the thing was up there past the 90th percentile - it was a pig of an environment to work on.
For something that's such a simple core, running gcc and using gdb to debug, it seems that Murphy's Law applied, recursively. If it could go wrong, it did - and revealed even more faults. Very poor. Mind you, we started work on it early - I think we were doing a lot of the debugging of core and toolchain, and things do slowly seem to be improving. You'd think a simple core + GCC + GDB would be easy to get right... :(
I cannot say we were impressed by the tools or the engineering that had gone into the core. Drop me a line off-group for some 'war stories'.
See above.
pete
--
pete@fenelon.com [Support no2id.net: working to destroy Blair's ID card fraud]
What would make this far more interesting (but about 50% more work) would be a comparison of the Xilinx/Microblaze kit with the Altera Nios II kit, rather than Xilinx PPC (which addresses a slightly different market than the soft processors). And if you have the choice, go for the more mass-market FPGAs (Spartan / Cyclone II) - they are of interest to a wider audience, and will be much faster for you to work with (fitting and routing is faster on the smaller chips).
You'll have to talk to Xilinx people to get a clear answer here. From experience with Altera kits, the simple cores (like the UART, or SDRAM) are free, and big cores (like a MAC) cost significant money - often more than for the cpu core.
Look at the opencores website, and have a shot at including things like the opencores ethernet MAC for comparison.
Yes. I'll echo the sentiments of others here. The tools SUCK. We have various projects that use V2Ps with both PPCs in use plus 5 Microblazes. It is possilbe, but be prepared for long days and nights and pleading with Xilinx for support. I found a couple of bugs (HW and SW) in their cores---not to mention the plethora of bugs in the build/compile/route EDK environment. This was at v6.3. They are now up to ver 8.x, but do no expect the tools to be much better. My experience is that newer versions mean some old bugs fixed, many new ones created.
The 'eval' means that the cores have timers built into them that once you apply power to the design, after x number of hours, that core will cease to function--requiring another power cycle.This is for the UART I am certain. Other evals may be severely limited. The uart eval also is limited in this way---ie no flexible baud rate at run time. It only operates at the baud you specify when you compiled it.
I think their ML310 eval kits and SW would support this.
Don't know on that. We used VxWorks--which was a headache unto itself.
Hello VxWorks Support? We are using Xilinx SoC---
VXW: "Call Xilinx"
Hello Xilinx Support? We are using VxWorks on EDK.
Xilinx: "Call VxWorks".
FWIW some of our more experienced SoC guys told me that as bad as Xilinx was, Altera SoC was worse--but there mostly from the HW aspect, whereas Xilinx is worse from the SW build environment.
You could always just send me a check and we'll let the articles write themselves.
Seriously, however - I wanted to find out just how much of a nightmare this project could become. My trepidation trimpot is now hard over.
Maybe. I was going through the filing cabinet at a job, and found that the previous tenant had left behind a box of condoms. After talking to some other people in the same row, I reached the conclusion that he was moonlighting as a clown and needed to practice his balloon animal technique.
Argh. I'm seeing a very common thread in all these responses :)
I'd hope Xilinx will provide premier quality support here, since they are the ones trying to make these articles look favorable to their product line. If I can't get it working in the lab, I'm sure as hell not going to write "I couldn't get it working, but I'm sure if you commit to buying parts, Xilinx will make it all play nice for you".
Hmm. The timer isn't a serious limitation for my application, but it does lean me towards opencores. I guess I have to wait until I get the stuff in hand so I can start to experiment. The sales literature leaves many questions unanswered.
Worst case I could use the AC97 codec interface they provide, I guess.
:))))
Hmm. I'm not sure how to react to that. I guess if Altera comes a-knocking, I'll REALLY run screaming at that point.
As a HW engineer I found the Altera SoC environment to be a clean install, experiment -> build process. I am still very impressed with how this has been handled, NiosII is even better.
Adding your interfaces to your own hardware from the core is easy enough, I've also worked through the tutorial to add custom hardware instructions but haven't used them in anger. When you've finished the SoC Builder outputs a complete development environment specific to the core you've just built including descriptions of any custom interfaces.
My only problem was initially not understanding the software build environment, I'm sure it was taking me much longer to do software respins than it should have.
I've only had a good play with the digilentinc xupv2pro + edk
Only small to medium projects. Nothing large
Some of the cores in the edk 7 are not the full versions.
Uart lite is fine and does everything I've needed. Ethernet mac I think is only a six month license ??
There is all the opencores stuff you can use with a bit of work. Some easily others not so.
Do not know about edk 8 as we haven't recieved our copy yet.
Usually with the boards ise and edk are only 60 day versions not full software. The ML403 has full version of ise base x but not the edk.
Can also get system generator which plugs into matlab.
Yes to all of those depending on bandwidth and sample rate.
I 've had the denix linux up and running following the instructions below on a xupv2pro.
Get the platform cable as well , especially if you want to use chipscope pro and for debugging
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Note windows only and make sure to use a usb2 high speed port.
Do not have any other versions of cygwin installed on the machine especially not on the windows path(can screw with edk and TI code composer studio)
See if you can get a xupv2pro to have a play with as well. A lot of projects on university websites.
See if you can get xilinx to give you copies of the university program tutorials.
Make sure to use a fast pc with lots of ram. The faster the better. Minimum of 1GB ram and lots of hard drive space with ise + edk you'll need at least 3GB free.
Use two machines one for linux side and the other for windows versions of xilinx. Could try all linux but some programming hardware isn't supported (platform cable and builtin versions on some xilinx boards).
From microblaze mailing list - are a few posts on ML403 there
microblaze-uclinux mailing list snipped-for-privacy@itee.uq.edu.au Project Home Page :
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Mailing List Archive :
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---------------------------------------- Hi Aurash, hi John,
We are working with the PPC on virtex2p. You do not need Monta Vista Linux. All you need is denx eldk:
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And the penguin ppc linux distribution:
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(we are using the 2.4 Kernel) To get started:
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might be helpful.
On the other hand we are also using uClinux on spartan3. It is really a question of what hardware you have and what you want to do ;-)
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