xyzsam/zedboard

A collection of Zynq Zedboard applications for Linux and baremetal.

Zynq Zedboard Applications

This repository contains source code and scripts for a variety of applications that can be run on the Zynq Zedboard, both on bare-metal and on Linux. Each application contains an accelerator that was created using Vivado HLS. User software demonstrates how to communicate with these custom peripherals.

Prerequistes

You will need to have familarity with using the Vivado Design Suite, HLS, and the Zedboard platform. I will not provide step-by-step instructions on how to bring up a system on the Zedboard - there are many excellent tutorials online for this purpose. This source code is designed for people who understand the basics of how Zynq development works and wants to know how to do something specific (such as DMA, interrupts, and interfacing with HLS).

Tools:

• Vivado Design Suite 2015.1
• Vivado HLS 2015.1
• Xilinx SDK 2015.1
• ARM bare-metal and Linux cross-compiler toolchain. I recommend the following two from Linaro:
  • gcc-linaro-arm-linux-gnueabihf-4.8-2014.04_linux
  • gcc-linaro-arm-none-eabi-4.8-2014.04_linux

General instructions

To get started, you can just directly import the baremetal, bsp, and hw_platform directories as separate projects into a new SDK workspace. You will need to set the appropriate references (baremetal references bsp, which references hw_platform).

To build from scratch, here are some general instructions:

1. Build the custom accelerator IP and add the IP to your user IP repository.

   cd project/hls
   make hls
   cd hls_dir/impl/ip
   cp xilinx_hls_accelerator_name_1_0.zip /path/to/ip/repo
   cd /path/to/ip/repo
   unzip xilinx_hls_accelerator_name_1_0.zip -d xilinx_hls_accelerator_name_1_0
   

2. Import the system block diagram (project/tcl/system.tcl) into Vivado. If Vivado does not find the custom peripheral, go into IP Catalog and refresh user repositories. You may have to manually add the user repo first before importing the block diagram.

3. Synthesize, implement, and generate the bitstream.

4. Export the hardware to the SDK.

5. Import the baremetal code as a new application project in SDK. You will also need to import the code in common/src. Let SDK generate the BSP for you.

   If the BSP does not include the custom peripheral drivers, you will need to add a new software repository in SDK and put the drivers there manually, then update the driver selections in BSP. See here for more information.

Note about baremetal code

Baremetal code generally must be compiled within Xilinx SDK. It is possible, but quite difficult, to compile them in an external environment. The SDK is required in order to program the Zedboard anyways, so compiling outside of the SDK is of limited utility. Although Makefiles are provided for these baremetal targets, do not expect them to link successfully (yet). Instead, create a new Xilinx SDK project, import the source code into the project, and let the SDK take care of the builds for you.