Getting Started¶

Navigating Content by Design Process¶

Xilinx documentation is organized around a set of standard design processes to help you find relevant content for your current development task. This document covers the following design processes:

System and Solution Planning: Identifying the components, performance, I/O, and data transfer requirements at a system level. Includes application mapping for the solution to PS, PL, and AI Engine.
- NoC (and DDR) IP Core Configuration
- System Design Example using Scalar Engine and Adaptable Engine
Embedded Software Development: Creating the software platform from the hardware platform and developing the application code using the embedded CPU. Also covers XRT and Graph APIs.
Hardware, IP, and Platform Development: Creating the PL IP blocks for the hardware platform, creating PL kernels, subsystem functional simulation, and evaluating the Vivado timing, resource use, and power closure. Also involves developing the hardware platform for system integration. Topics in this document that apply to this design process include:
System Integration and Validation: Integrating and validating the system functional performance, including timing, resource use, and power closure. Topics in this document that apply to this design process include:

Hardware Requirements¶

This tutorial targets the Versal® ACAP VCK190 and VMK180 evaluation boards. To use this guide, you need the following hardware items. These are included with the evaluation board. Ensure that the required tools are installed properly and your environments match the requirements.

The evaluation board kit includes:

VCK190/VMK180 ES1/Production board
AC power adapter (12 VDC)
USB Type-A to USB Micro cable (for UART communications)
USB Micro cable for programming and debugging via USB-Micro JTAG connection
SD-MMC flash card for Linux booting
QSPI daughter card X_EBM-01, REV_A01

Additional flash daughter cards:

Note

These modules will be required for eMMC or OSPI related steps in the tutorial. Ignore this if you do not have or do not intend to use the eMMC/OSPI modules.

OSPI daughter card X-EBM-03 REV_A02
eMMC daughter card X-EBM-02 REV_A02

Note

QSPI/SD were tested on VCK190/VMK180 ES1 boards.
OSPI/eMMC were tested on VCK190 and VMK180 RevB production boards.
OSPI and eMMC boot modes are only supported on the VCK190 and VMK180 RevB production boards.

Installation Requirements¶

Vitis Integrated Design Environment and Vivado Design Suite¶

Ensure that you have the Vitis™ 2021.2 software development platform installed. The Vitis IDE is a Xilinx® unified tool which comes with all the hardware and software as a package. If you install the Vitis IDE, you will automatically get both the Vivado® Design Suite and the Vitis development tools. You do not have to make any extra selections in the installer.

Note

Visit https://www.xilinx.com/support/download.html to confirm that you have the latest tools version.

For more information on installing the Vivado Design Suite, refer to the Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation: Embedded Software Development (UG1400).

PetaLinux Tools¶

Install the PetaLinux tools to run through the Linux portion of this tutorial. PetaLinux tools run under the Linux host system running one of the following:

Red Hat Enterprise Workstation/Server 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 8.1, 8.2 (64-bit)
CentOS Workstation/Server 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 8.1, 8.2 (64-bit)
Ubuntu Linux Workstation/Server 16.04.5, 16.04.6, 18.04.1, 18.04.2, 18.04.3, 18.04.4, 18.04.5, 20.04, 20.04.1 (64-bit)

This can use either a dedicated Linux host system or a virtual machine running one of these Linux operating systems on your Windows development platform.

When you install PetaLinux tools on your system of choice, you must do the following:

Download PetaLinux 2021.2 software from the Xilinx website.
Download the respective BSP as described in Example Project: Creating Linux Images Using PetaLinux.
Add common system packages and libraries to the workstation or virtual machine. For more information, see the Installation Requirements from the PetaLinux Tools Documentation: Reference Guide (UG1144) and the PetaLinux Release Notes.

Prerequisites¶

8 GB RAM (recommended minimum for Xilinx tools)
2 GHz CPU clock or equivalent (minimum of eight cores)
100 GB free HDD space

Extracting the PetaLinux Package¶

By default, the PetaLinux tools are installed into the current working directory. Alternatively, you can specify an installation path.

For example, to install PetaLinux tools under /opt/pkg/petalinux/<petalinux-version>:

$ mkdir -p /opt/pkg/petalinux/<petalinux-version>
$ ./petalinux-v<petalinux-version>-final-installer.run --dir /opt/pkg/petalinux/<petalinux-version>

Note

Do not change the install directory permissions to CHMOD 775 as it might cause BitBake errors. This installs the PetaLinux tool into the /opt/pkg/petalinux/<petalinux-version> directory.

For more information, see PetaLinux Tools Documentation: Reference Guide (UG1144).

Software Licensing¶

Xilinx software uses FLEXnet licensing. When the software is first run, it performs a license verification process. If the license verification does not find a valid license, the license wizard guides you through the process of obtaining a license and ensuring that the license can be used with the tools installed. If you do not need the full version of the software, you can use an evaluation license. For installation instructions and information, see the Vivado Design Suite User Guide: Release Notes, Installation, and Licensing (UG973).

Tutorial Design Files¶

The reference design files for Production Silicon are provided in the ref_files directory.

Design files for ES1 are available on the lounge.