mfkiwl/fyp

Leon3

The Leon 3 soft core processor is developed by ESA and is maintained in the GRLIB library from the Cobham Gaisler AB. The GRLIB library contains a flexible makefile implementation to rapidly create custom ASICs by selecting modules within the library. Some of these components are IP blocks and are therefore only free-of-charge whenever it is not used commercially.

Tools

• Linux Ubuntu-20.04.1
• QuartusII Lite (Web Edition) (18.1.0) to synthesize
• Xilinx ISE Design Suite 14.7
• ModelSIM(-Altera) (10.5b) to simulate the design
• Bare Code Compiler to compile the software
• GNU Make (4.1) to run the Makefiles

Setting up Linux

For guest linux we need

• VMware Workstation player, download it from here
• Linux ubuntu iso image, downlaod it from here

Instalation of Quartus for ModelSim

Installation of Quartus and ModelSIM

1. Extract with tar xfv Quartus-lite-18.1.0.625-linux.tar
2. Run the setup with sh setup.sh
3. Click through the installer, install the Cyclone IV and Cyclone V packages and make sure to install ModelSIM-Altera (the free version of ModelSIM)
4. Install 32 bit libraries sudo apt install gcc-multilib
5. Install some more libraries
   sudo apt-get install gcc-multilib g++-multilib
lib32z1 lib32stdc++6 lib32gcc1
expat:i386 fontconfig:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libexpat1:i386 libc6:i386 libgtk-3-0:i386
libpng12-0:i386 libice6:i386 libsm6:i386 libncurses5:i386 zlib1g:i386
libx11-6:i386 libxau6:i386 libxdmcp6:i386 libxext6:i386 libxft2:i386 libxrender1:i386
libxt6:i386 libxtst6:i386
   There might be following error here
   E: Unable to locate package libpng12-0:i386
   To resolve it run following commands, also can check complete blog here
   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/libpng12
sudo apt update
sudo apt install libpng12-0
6. Download the freetype library here
7. Unpack, build and copy to the appropriate directory.

cd freetype-2.4.12
./configure --build=i686-pc-linux-gnu "CFLAGS=-m32" "CXXFLAGS=-m32" "LDFLAGS=-m32"
make -j8
mkdir modelsim_ase/lib32
sudo cp freetype-2.4.12/objs/.libs/libfreetype.so* modelsim_ase/lib32
9. Open .bashrc to add the binaries to your path:
nano ~/.bashrc
10. Paste the following at the bottom, where you replace the ALTERAPATH to your quartus installation directory. Restart the terminal when you have saved the file.
export ALTERAPATH="/path/to/quartus/"
export ALTERAOCLSDKROOT="${ALTERAPATH}/hld"
export QUARTUS_ROOTDIR=${ALTERAPATH}/quartus
export QUARTUS_ROOTDIR_OVERRIDE="$QUARTUS_ROOTDIR"
export PATH=$PATH:${ALTERAPATH}/quartus/bin
export PATH=$PATH:${ALTERAPATH}/nios2eds/bin
export PATH=$PATH:${QSYS_ROOTDIR}
export QUARTUS_64BIT=1
export QSYS_ROOTDIR="QUARTUS_ROOTDIR/sopc_builder/bin"

export PATH=$PATH:${ALTERAPATH}/modelsim_ase/bin

export PATH=/opt/sparc-elf/bin:$PATH
11. Re-open your terminal and edit your binary vsim launch file (if you are unsure where this is located type which vsim) change mode=${MTI_VCO_MODE:-""} to mode=${MTI_VCO_MODE:-"32"} add export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${dir}/lib32 below dir=dirname "$arg0" change vco="linux_rh60" to vco="linux"

For simulations it is very handy to add the grlib library to your path as well:

1. Download grlib here
2. nano ~/.bashrc
3. Paste the following at the bottom of that file, replace the path to your installation of the grlib library.
   export GRLIB=/path/to/grlib

Instalation of Xilinx

1. Download it from here
2. Extract it and execute sh xsetup and do the installations.

Installing Bare C compiler (BCC) for soft code compilation

Download the zipped file from gaisler.Extract it and copy the file to /opt/ execute sudo cp -r sparc-elf-3.4.4 /opt/

Simulation

Follow the instructions section 3 in grlib.pdf. It basically boils down to the following (assuming you have correctly cloned the git repository):

1. Go to home/test/Downloads/grlib-gpl-2018.3-b4226/designs/leon3-gr-xc3s-1500 directory and execute
   make install-altera
2. Execute make xconfig to give design configuration. Here click on VHDL debugging and check yes for Accelerated UART tracing. GO back to main menu and click Save and Exit.
3. Execute make vsim you might get this error
   

It means some VHDL packages are missing.
4. To add these packages go to (in my case) /home/void/Downloads/xilinx/14.7/ISE_DS/ISE/vhdl/src/unisims copy unisim_VCOMP.vhd, unisim_VPKG.vhd and all .vhd packages in the primitive folder to /home/test/Downloads/grlib-gpl-2018.3-b4226/lib/techmap/unisim
5. Now execute 'make vsim-launch' to launch ModelSim.
6. To compile all those missing packages execute following commands in ModelSim Transcript.
vcom -93 -explicit -reportprogress 300 -work unisim {/home/test/Downloads/grlib-gpl-2018.3-b4226/lib/techmap/unisim/unisim_VCOMP.vhd}
vcom -93 -explicit -reportprogress 300 -work unisim {/home/test/Downloads/grlib-gpl-2018.3-b4226/lib/techmap/unisim/unisim_VPKG.vhd}
vcom -93 -explicit -reportprogress 300 -work unisim {/home/test/Downloads/grlib-gpl-2018.3-b4226/lib/techmap/unisim/*.vhd}
7. Now execute make vsim in ModelSim Transcript, this time there would be no errors for missing packages.
8. Finally execute make vsim-run to run all and see the waveforms.
9. To add c code to the simulations, go to systest.c file located in (in my case) /home/test/Downloads/grlib-gpl-2018.3-b4226/designs/leon3-gr-xc3s-1500/systest.c and add some c code in it, for example

main()
{
printf("\n\n Hello LEON3 World!!!\n");
}

10. Open terminal and execute make soft.
11. Run simulations again to see the c code ouput in the simulations by executing
    make install-altera
make vsim-run
    Output in my case

References

https://www.gaisler.com/products/grlib/grlib.pdf
https://github.com/rzonnie/Leon3