Hardware setup

Before we start running application programs. Let's take a look at our hardware setup.

1. Apple MacBook Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.4.9. VMware Fusion virtual machine with Ubuntu 7.04 installed.
2. Apple PowerBook G4  setup as a VT100 terminal emulator.  The screen program emulates the HyperTerminal program. We can use any terminal we have available. We just happened to have a PowerBook lying around doing nothing.
   
3. Apple CInema Display 23", the main display where ISE and EDK windows are displayed.
4. Xilinx Platform Cable USB used to communicate with the ML403 evaluation board.
5. Keyspan USB to Serial converter for connecting to the VT100 terminal.
   
6. Xilinx ML403 evaluation board.
   

                                                                               (system.bit should be download.bit)

Download and execute a simple program

We will use the memory test program TestApp_Memory.c as our first simple example to see if the hardware and software will function on our board.



Start the Xilinx Platform Studio

==> xps &



Download the bitstream

The file system.bit, created after hardware generation (completion of Xflow), is an uninitialized bitstream and does not include the ELF file. It is only when we execute the command to download or update the bitstream that the system.bit and ELF files merge into download.bit.

When we select Device Configuration > Download Bitstream, XPS downloads the bitstream (download.bit file) onto the target board using iMPACT in batch mode. XPS uses the file etc/download.cmd for downloading the bitstream. Because XPS tools are makefile based, the download button calls on the makefile and executes the steps necessary to create the bitstream with the Executable Linked Format (ELF) file populated within the bitstream.

Get program size

To ensure that the compiled TestApp_Memory code fits into the BRAM we will use the command Software->Get Program Size.

At Local date and time: Mon Jun  4 19:46:49 2007
 mb-size /home/svenand/root/projects/ETC/xps/TestApp_Memory/executable.elf started...
   text       data        bss        dec        hex    filename
   3944        332       2064       6340       18c4    /home/svenand/root/projects/ETC/xps/TestApp_Memory/executable.elf

Done!

Running the program

After we downloaded the bitstream the included program will start executing and display the result in the VT100 terminal.



The DDR SDRAM test program TestApp_Memory executes and it passes. We have reach one more