ICAP Virtex2

Hi,

I am very interested in exploring the use of ICAP for self-reconfiguration of the Virtex2 fpga. XAPP 662 describes the in-system reconfiguration of RocketIO attributes, and I have been trying to understand the process of self-reconfiguration through this application note as well as the reference design that comes with it.

It seems that we need to configure the FPGA with a bitstream generated from hdl that includes an PLB bus arbitrator and controller, as well as ICAP IPIF to the PLB. Does this mean the ICAP, possessing access the configuration memory, would actually have access to parts of the configuration memory that defines the arbitrator and ICAP IPIF as well? Or are is the information used to configure the arbitrator and IPIF somewhere else? Say for instance the fpga is to be configured with a jpeg encoder. Would the configuration memory accessed by the ICAP be solely occupied by the jpeg encoder configuration, or by the ipif etc as well? If in the latter case, then ICAP should never modify areas defining the IPIF, is this correct?

I would appreciate too if someone who has done this before can provide some guidelines on how I can set the system up to use the ICAP. Thanks in advance!:)

Ju Hwa

Reply to
PanJuHwa
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Hi JuHwa,

ICAP can also access the IPIF. But of course, you should avoid moidfying the area defining the IPIF since it may introduce misbehavior in the ICAP.

To set a system up, you can use the EDK to design an embedded system supporting Linux port. Basically, the system consists of a processor (Microblaze, or PPC450 in Virtex-II Pro), some IP core peripherals and PLB/OPB/DCR buses to connect the processor core to other cores. You can refer to the ML300 embedded system reference deisgn to get an idea of it.

To use the ICAP in a system mentioned before is straightforward. You merely need to attach the "ipif_slv_sram" in XAPP 662 reference design to PLB/OPB.

Hope this helps,

tk

t depends on the device you use. If you are using Virtex-II Pro, you can "PanJuHwa" ???????: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

Reply to
tk

Hi, I was wondering if any of you have any numbers in terms of configuration times ( micro seconds ?) using ICAP.

Do you think using ICAP adds more overhead than it does good?

In my application, I have DATA(Dynamic Part that needs to be reconfigured), and the Processing Engine(PE, which will be the static part) that works on the DATA. As ssoon as PE finishes working on DATA set 1, I will need to change the LUT contents on the DATA block. And I would like to generate this data internally using the hard core Power PC of Virtex II pro.

Reply to
xfpgas

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