Programming Xilinx PowerPC

[ma]

Hello,

I have a Veritex-4 PCI board and I like to program the PowerPC on it. I
don't have the EDK from Xilinx. Here are my questions:



How can program the PowerPC without buying EDK?

As I know the compiler and linker is free (part of GNU) where can I get them
for free?

How can I download the compiled program to PowerPC?

How can I get the output? For example if I write a hello world type of
program, can I see the STDIO on screen?



Any help is much appreciated.



Best regards

 

[Antti Lukats]

Hello,

I have a Veritex-4 PCI board and I like to program the PowerPC on it. I
don't have the EDK from Xilinx. Here are my questions:


How can program the PowerPC without buying EDK?

short answer: you can not
long answer: you can if write your own minimal replacement fo EDK

As I know the compiler and linker is free (part of GNU) where can I get
them for free?

ppc gcc can be obtained but it want help you much, see above

How can I download the compiled program to PowerPC?

over JTAG or buy preloading BRAMs

How can I get the output? For example if I write a hello world type of
program, can I see the STDIO on screen?

use EDK or add your peripherals and re-implemented all the funtionality
provide by EDK

Any help is much appreciated.

doing it wihtout EDK costs you WAY more than than obtaining EDK, it could be
done, but the time needed for that just isnt worht doing it

sorry, but Xilinx REALLY REALLY doesnt want anyone to work on the Virtex PPC
without using EDK, it is doable (without EDK) but it really isnt worht
trying

Antti

 

[ma]

Thanks.
Can I program it without using JTAG possibly over PCI bus? I am ready to
write appropriate driver if I know where can I get the documentation for
writing such driver.

Best regards

 

[Antti Lukats]

Thanks.
Can I program it without using JTAG possibly over PCI bus? I am ready to
write appropriate driver if I know where can I get the documentation for
writing such driver.

you can "load" the program by any means you wish - as logn as you have
written your own bootstrap loader.
this can be of PCI bus also.

but that is not your problem, without EDK you wast WAY too much time and
most likely end up with nothing anyway - there is nothing to 'program' as
long as you dont have the proper system bus structure and peripheral IP
cores in place, and even as it is possible to be done without using EDK, it
doesnt make sense.


Antti

 

[Petter Gustad]

Where can I find information about writing a driver for downloading
program to PowerPC

It depends. You have to get the code into memory somehow, either BRAM,
SDRAM, FLASH, etc. that you have on your board. How you do that
depends on the IO interface you have on your board, JTAG, USB, PCI,
RS-232, etc.

redirecting its STDIO to a window in PC?

That also depends on the IO interface you have on your board. If you
have a serial-port you can print to the serial-port and get the output
to a window on your PC using kermit or whatever serial program you
prefer.

Petter

 

[ma]

That make sense.
My idea is that I buy EDK and then develop my driver to download and use the
processor without JTAG by writing my own driver for PCI. My main aim is to
learn in the cheapest way!
Where can I find information about writing a driver for downloading program
to PowerPC and also redirecting its STDIO to a window in PC?

Best regards and thanks for your kind help.

 

[ma]

Thanks
I think I understood what I should do to download the program into PowerPC
at least in theory
But I couldn't understand what how can use PCI bus for getting STDIO out of
board? assume that I have the following code in my PowerPC program:

main()
{
printf("hello world\n");
}

what is the path from PowerPC to a window on PC? assuming I know how to
communicate between FPGA board and PC.

Best regards

 

[mk]

Thanks
I think I understood what I should do to download the program into PowerPC
at least in theory
But I couldn't understand what how can use PCI bus for getting STDIO out of
board? assume that I have the following code in my PowerPC program:

main()
{
printf("hello world\n");
}

what is the path from PowerPC to a window on PC? assuming I know how to
communicate between FPGA board and PC.

Telling you the path is the easy part. You need to (re-)implement the
printf library function and instead of writing to a file (number 1
IIRC) you write the data to a memory buffer and generate an interrupt
to the PCI bus. Your driver running on the PC, having received the
interrupt, would read the data from the same buffer. It is no
different than a network card receiving a packet from the network
actually. How would you write a device driver which dumps all the
packets to screen ? It's the same only the data doesn't come from the
wire but from your printf implementation. You can structure your pc
device driver/hardware communication stack similarly.

 

[Jack Klein]

Hello,

I have a Veritex-4 PCI board and I like to program the PowerPC on it. I
don't have the EDK from Xilinx. Here are my questions:



How can program the PowerPC without buying EDK?

As I know the compiler and linker is free (part of GNU) where can I get them
for free?

How can I download the compiled program to PowerPC?

How can I get the output? For example if I write a hello world type of
program, can I see the STDIO on screen?



Any help is much appreciated.



Best regards

Your program is not just programming the PowerPC core(s). The
processors are hard core, but they have no connection at all to the
outside world. You have to configure the FPGA to provide some
internally memory, and for a program of any size, to act as a memory
controller to more memory off the chip.

Virtix provides IP for all of this, and all of this must be done
before the PowerPC can even fetch its first instruction.

 

[Hal Murray]

How can I download the compiled program to PowerPC?

over JTAG or buy preloading BRAMs

Are they cheaper than the EDK?

Are they available through the Xilinx online store?

(good one)

 

[Eli Hughes]

Please just buy the EDK. For the $500 its costs, the printf problem
will be solved in about 30 minutes. The EDK its so much simple to do
what you want.

If you can't afford it and are a student, you can get a free University
donation to the Lab.

 

[Michael Thomsen]

Please just buy the EDK. For the $500 its costs, the printf problem
will be solved in about 30 minutes. The EDK its so much simple to do
what you want.

Ok, could you point me to some documentation/tutorial for the EDK?
I got an eval version with a Spartan 3 dev kit some time ago, but it was
so confusing I never understood how to use it, and I couldn't find any
useful beginners-guide back then.

//michael