Hi All, Iam new to xilinx platfrom.
I was trying to port open source linux on Ml403 board. i tried to follow the instructions in the below link.
Is there an alternative way of acheiving my goal. Kindly suggest. Thanks in advance.
Ramesh
Doesn't the ml403 come with a Linux distribution? Why would you need to port anything?
I should probably note that Xilinx leaches a hell of a lot of value off open source by using Linux as a host platform for it's tools, GCC as the main production compiler for PPC core software, GNU for the libraries for PPC, and Linux in several forms as host operating systems for it's product offerings.
It's probably worth writing Austin, Peter, and the other regular usenet posters from Xilinx and making it clear just how much Xilinx benefits from open source, the Xilinx market created by open source, and the developers which frequently volunteer their time supporting Xilinx open source use.
And then suggest that they take their thumb off the JHDLBits project, and start doing a better job of contributing back to the open source community. If that isn't enough to get their attention, maybe switching design wins to Altera and letting Xilinx sales know why.
The JHDLBits team boldly set out to provide open source Xilinx tools before getting shut down by Xilinx.
References are a dead sourceforge project, and some papers:
Plus see the teams thesis work:
The wire data base, router, fpga simulator, and the main JHDLBits tools are a valuable reconfigurable computing resource for the open source community ... many hours of effort by this team squashed by Xilinx
Hi Ramesh,
you might want to have a look at the following documents:
- XAPP765
- UG080, pg. 37
Start with rebuilding the reference design and Linux kernel for the ML403 board. All the necessary information can be found in the documents above and on
The Xilinx software drivers for the Linux peripherals have been released into the open source repository for the Linux PPC 2.4 kernel tree. This tree is picked up by various Linux distributions. Further, the MLD technology in EDK helps you to customize the Linux kernel for your particular hardware design.
At this time I recommend staying with the 2.4 Linux kernel as the support for ML300 (and the ML403) in the 2.6 kernel is very basic (UART only).
Another good source of information is the linuxppc-embedded mailing list (see
- Peter
ramesh wrote:
I take umbrage to your assertion that Xilinx is a leach and doesn't contribute back to the open source communities. Xilinx has been a contributing Corporate Patron of Free Software Foundation for many years now
In addition we funded, supported and developed the Virtex-II Pro and Virtex-4 PowerPC405 ports that are the parent post of this thread and then push for their release into the official Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x PowerPC trees so that everyone will have access to them easily.
Ed McGettigan
-- Xilinx Inc.
I take umbrage to your assertion that Xilinx is a leach and doesn't contribute back to the open source communities. Xilinx has been a contributing Corporate Patron of Free Software Foundation for many years now
In addition we funded, supported and developed the Virtex-II Pro and Virtex-4 PowerPC405 ports that are the parent post of this thread and then push for their release into the official Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x PowerPC trees so that everyone will have access to them easily.
Ed McGettigan
-- Xilinx Inc.
First, if Xilinx had not been so heavy handed with the JHDLBits project, trashing the efforts of a half dozen young engineers, your umbrage might be half way valid. But the reality is that the economic value of gcc, GNU, and Linux is significantly more than $10M-30M NRE and $1m-3m/yr as the UNIX licenses and royalities would have cost you more. The real value of GPL tools that you ship, if the company had developed GPL free version is an order of magnitude or two more than that.
*IF* your contributions to open software are a significant fraction of the equivalent UNIX license fees, then sure, Xilinx is paying it's way.That is completely self serving to generate revenues from the hardware sales. the PPC port existed long before Xilinx started shipping the IBM core in Pro's.
Hello,
I ported linux 2.4_devel to the ml403 board.
The zImage. that you get is fine for loading into the Virtex4 ppc. Th only thing you need to do is "cp" it to another directory with the .el extension.
I integrated it with my download.bit into an .ace file and it works o both for the reference design and for my custom design (a basic one).
Feel free to ask me about what I did if you need help. Paula
I'd like a copy of your .config file?
I was also wondering if one generates the standard linux architecture (cpu, timer, interrupt controller, etc. all at the right memory addresses) can't they generate an .edn file and a top-level vhdl instantiation so that anyone else can use it without needing the EDK?
Basically, it seems like there should be a coregen module that asks:
And then it generates an .edn and a vhdl template that you pull into your ISE project like any othe core. This way we wouldn't need the EDK and they could provide prebuilt linux images that you would know work. Linux would become a 10 minute task for Xilinx: a competitive advantage I'd say.
-Clark
You could look at the BYU work on this.
ramesh wrote:
We are about to undertake this effort as well. I would greatly appreciate it you could do a quick write up for this thread regarding your process. Specificlly detailing which document(s) and/or instructions you followed to do the port, URLs for where these can be found, and most importantly where you departed from the starting points, and/or stumbled.
We talked to Timesys and MonteVista both about this. The former sounds promising, and if they had an existing port for ML403 as a starting point we would probably just pay for their subscription service. The later did not offer a business model that was compatible with our needs. The business model can make sense for a lot of customers. We are both an ODM and a Design for Hire shop, and the model would work for some but not all of our customers/engagements. I do not intend to comment further on this. Please talk to MonteVista directly if you want to understand the business model, as I do not want to risk misadvising.
We are also considering doing this without using an outside service, so your comments will be of value to me in our decision making process.
If there are any consultants that have done a Linux 2.4 port to a Xilinx platform (either V2pro or V4FX, located in the greater Boston area, please feel free to drop me an email, and we'll chat offline. We might consider using an outsider to bring some of my guys up to speed, and help with our port and/or drivers.
We are excited about the possibilities of Linux on V4FX. We are presently using the ML403 board as the basis for our compute platform, and intend to use Linux. I, like others, am not interested in reinventing the wheel.
We are doing the initial development on our projects with ML403 and custom daughterboards. We will then build the completely custom systems. The ML403 is a very well thought out platform. Previously, we would build custom hardware before even starting the application development.
For the past four years our compute platform was based on V2/microBlaze and/or V2pro/PPC with homebrewed DOS file system, and no OS. But now that we need to incorporate TCP communications and much more complicated applications support, an OS (specifically Linux) is the direction we are headed.
Regards, Erik.
-- Erik Widding President
On the ML403 you could start with the .config file in the reference design at
- Peter
For example the Users Guide for ML403, pg37:
- Peter
ramesh wrote:
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