Experience with Xilinx Microblaze kit?

> FWIW some of our more experienced SoC guys told me that as bad as Xilinx
> was, Altera SoC was worse--but there mostly from the HW aspect, whereas Xilinx is worse from the 
> SW build environment.


As a HW engineer I found the Altera SoC environment to be a clean
install, experiment -> build process. I am still very impressed with
how this has been handled, NiosII is even better.

Adding your interfaces to your own hardware from the core is easy enough,
I've also worked through the tutorial to add custom hardware instructions
but haven't used them in anger. When you've finished the SoC Builder
outputs a complete development environment specific to the core you've
just built including descriptions of any custom interfaces.

My only problem was initially not understanding the software build
environment, I'm sure it was taking me much longer to do software
respins than it should have.



Nial 

"larwe" <zwsdotcom@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1140744444.082114.220840@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
> I've been asked to write a couple of real-life up-and-running articles
> about working with the Xilinx PPC/Microblaze kit (ML403 board)
> consisting of a meaty FPGA with PowerPC 405 hard core. I'll have a
> loaner kit with the option to buy.

I've only had a good play with the digilentinc xupv2pro + edk
<http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav1=Products&Nav2=Programmable&Prod=XUPV2P>
<http://www.xilinx.com/univ/xupv2p.html>

Only small to medium projects.
Nothing large

>
> Has anyone here worked with this kit? The documentation is a bit vague
> about what exactly comes with the board, software-wise. Specifically:
> They talk about "evaluation" versions of numerous cores such as UARTs,
> Ethernet MACs, etc - what is "evaluation" about them? They also imply
> that the synthesis software is not a full version.

Some of the cores in the  edk 7
are not the full versions.

Uart lite is fine and does everything I've needed.
Ethernet mac I think is only a six month license ??

There is all the opencores stuff you can use with a bit of work.
Some easily others not so.

Do not know about edk 8 as we haven't recieved our copy yet.

Usually with the boards ise and edk are only 60 day versions not full 
software.
The ML403 has full version of ise base x but not the edk.

Can also get system generator which plugs into matlab.

> Does the kit include enough host-side software for me to roll, say, an
> ADC and a display controller in the FPGA (the included TFT-LCD
> controller is probably not exactly what I want)? I'd like to be able to
> build a simple digital spectrum analyzer and signal generator with this
> board (audio bandwidth).

Yes to all of those depending on bandwidth and sample rate.

>
> How easy is it to get the included Linux BSP running - is it plug and
> play, or is there horror involved? I'd basically just want enough
> services to get a framebuffer running and start my own process. I was
> thinking of eCos, but if Linux is ready-rolled...
>
> Any other comments/gotchas/advice to run screaming gratefully accepted.

I 've had the denix  linux up and running following the instructions below
on a xupv2pro.

Get the platform cable as well , especially if you want to use chipscope pro
and for debugging
http://direct.xilinx.com/bvdocs/publications/ds300.pdf
Note windows only and make sure to use a usb2 high speed port.

Do not have any other versions of cygwin installed on the machine especially 
not
on the windows path(can screw with edk and TI code composer studio)

See if you can get a xupv2pro to have a play with as well.
A lot of projects on university websites.

See if you can get xilinx to give you
copies of the university program tutorials.


Make sure to use a fast pc with lots of ram. The faster the better.
Minimum of 1GB ram and lots of hard drive space with ise + edk
you'll need at least 3GB free.

Use two machines one for linux side and the other for windows versions of
xilinx. Could try all linux but some programming hardware  isn't supported
(platform cable and builtin versions on some xilinx boards).


From microblaze mailing list - are a few posts on ML403 there

microblaze-uclinux mailing list
microblaze-uclinux@itee.uq.edu.au
Project Home Page : http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~jwilliams/mblaze-uclinux
Mailing List Archive : 
http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~listarch/microblaze-uclinux/


http://www.crhc.uiuc.edu/IMPACT/gsrc/hardwarelab/docs/kernel-HOWTO.html

----------------------------------------
Hi Aurash, hi John,

We are working with the PPC on virtex2p. You do not need Monta Vista Linux.
All you need is denx eldk: http://www.denx.de/twiki/bin/view/DULG/ELDK
And the penguin ppc linux distribution: 
http://www.penguinppc.org/kernel/#developers
(we are using the 2.4 Kernel)
To get started: http://www.klingauf.de/v2p/index.phtml might be helpful.

On the other hand we are also using uClinux on spartan3.
It is really a question of what hardware you have and what you want to do 
;-)

Have Fun
Jan
------------------------------

Alex