Re: [partial-reconfig] Working Under Linux

[Dimitris Syrivelis <jsyr@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 15 January 2005 20:07, Valentin Longchamp wrote:
> Hi all !
>
> I am going in the next weeks to work on a project involving Xilinx FPGA
> with Microblaze, uCLinux and partial reconfiguration !
>
> I'm not new to the FPGA world but until now I have only worked with
> Atlera boards. With their tool Quartus, it's a rather hard work to work
> under Linux. Is it the same with Xilinx softs ?

> Because the thing is that I don't like working under Windows and as I
> will have to cross-compile things for the Microblaze, I think i'll be
> more efficient in my Linux environment !
>
> So, has anyone already managed to work under Linux with Xilinx ISE (a
> 6.1 version preferably) and to do partial reconfig with it ?
>
> Thanks a lot
>
> Valentin

 Hello,
   
   As long as you do not wish to download bitstreams and you are not building 
complex designs that require about 3GB of system memory the ISE development 
environment as well as the EDK (both ver 6.2) work well under linux!  I've 
been using both quite a while and i did not face any problems ( I have also 
tried successfully Gregory Mermoud's Partial Reconfiguration tutorial 
example) . 

 Iam using the gentoo linux distribution but i wouldn't recommend it for 
Xilinx tools. It took me quite a while to get things to work. They have been 
tested on Redhat 8.0 but they may also run on SuSE without extra 
configuration troubles!    

   If you wish to download a configuration bitstream to an FPGA, you need a 
special Kernel side parallel port driver ( i think there is no support for 
USB and so multilynx download solution might not work at all). Xilinx tools 
contain a pre-built module that can be only hooked to kernel version 2.4.18  
(i have not tested it) , which is almost 3 years old, so it is quite a 
compromise to make if you plan to install it on your main PC.
               
 I also happen to think that you can't avoid to use 2 different machines -yet-  
so if you want to have an efficient microblaze-uclinux development 
environment you might as well do what Mr Williams recommends:
    http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~jwilliams/mblaze-uclinux/Documentation/development_environment.htm
    
   
   Dimitris

-- 
Dimitris Syrivelis
Dept of Computer Engineering & Telecommunications ( www.inf.uth.gr )
University of Thessaly 
Volos
Greece
Tel +302421074973

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