Re: [partial-reconfig] partial reconfiguration

["Nizar Sakr" <nsakr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks John for the files and all your tips, I want to take a look at the
code and later even use it entirely to access the HWICAP, however, for the
moment i'm still going over and over the xapp290 to create a partial
bitstream to test the hwicap with the microblaze without uClinux, I'm not
very familiar with all the tools that i'm supposed to use to create a
partial bitstream according to that document, such as FPGA editor and
floorplanner and I can't seem to find any documentation nor tutorials for
these tools, if you can refer me to anything that might help me or even if
you can simply show me a simple example such as a one bit adder and how it
can be constrained to a column on a virtex-2 in floorplanner for example,
I would super appreciate it, it's always that initial step that is the
hardest to achieve,
Any help would be very much appreciated,
thank you,
Nizar

> Hi Nizar,
>
> Nizar Sakr wrote:
>
>> I read your paper entitled, *“Embedded Linux as a platform for
>> dynamically self-reconfiguring systems-on-chip” *and I must say it’s
>> very interesting! In my research group at the University of Ottawa
>> (Canada), we are working on a reconfigurable co-processor and I’m
>> currently using the HWICAP peripheral to Self-reconfigure the FPGA on
>> which the Co-processor will reside. About your ucLinux driver, in one of
>> your previous emails you say that you don’t mind sharing your ucLinux
>> driver, do you have a website from which I can download it?
>
> I'm glad you enjoyed the paper, it was certainly fun doing it.  I had
> planned to tidy the driver up before releasing it, but other priorities
> took over.  With that in mind, see the attached archive that contains
> both my "adapter code" and the low level opb_xhwicap driver sources.  In
> the uClinux context it should be decompressed into the
> linux-2.4.x/drivers/char/misc/ subdirectory.  Some other small tweaks
> are necessary to integrate it into the uClinux build context - let me
> know if that's what you are trying to do, or if you are just interested
> in the source code.
>
> Note the licensing status of this driver is a bit grey.  I assert
> copyright, and release under the GPL, the adapter.c which is a wrapper
> over the Xilinx low-level driver code, and the linux kernel.  Xilinx'
> copyright notice in their low-level driver code is silent about
> redistribution restrictions.  It's been no problem in the past, but I
> cannot guarantee this.  For research purposes I'm sure there is no
> problem.
>
>> Furthermore, I started working on the reconfiguration of the
>> co-processor implementation about a month ago, and currently I’m trying
>> to create partial-bitstreams in order to test the HWICAP and I must say
>> creating bitstream according the appnote 290 is a hassle. In your paper
>> you mention the following:
>
> [snip].
>
> This is indeed the unpleasant end of partial reconfiguration research.
> For now, there is really no way around the approach(es) described in
> XAPP290.  The following paragraph which you quote, refers to my efforts
> to morph the Microblaze/EDK build output into a structure that can be
> processed in the manner described in XAPP290.
>
>> “To implement and test our examples above, we used partial bit streams
>> laboriously hand-created using the Xilinx FPGA Editor tool. This is
>> partly because the modular and partial reconfiguration implementation
>> flows are not supported for Microblaze and EDK (Embedded Development
>> Kit) projects. We have recently successfully “modularised” the
>> Microblaze flow, and are in the process of automating this, so that
>> reconfigurable modules may be easily specified, and interfaced to
>> Microblaze processor systems.”
>
>> Would you be able to give me some advice
>> on how to easily create reconfigurable modules/partial-bitstreams, any
>> examples?
>
> All I can really suggest is make sure you go through xapp290 several
> times, make sure you understand every step of the partial
> reconfiguration flow.  Things re: microblaze and modularisation /
> partial flow are improving slowly - e.g. in recent releases of EDK, the
> separate microblaze system "components" are at least synthesised into
> individual subdirectories (implementation/XXX/), so that makes your job
> a little bit easier in the partial flow.  Also there was a bit of buzz a
> few months ago at xilinx.openchip.org on building modularised microblaze
> systems, don't know if it ever went anywhere though.
>
> Hope this is helpful.  Let me know if you need some assistance getting
> the driver going - no-one other than me has ever used it, so there's
> probably some gremlins lurking in there!
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>
>

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