Lab 1 SDSoC Build and Load

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This post is my run through of SDSoC Lab 1 Tutorial at [link].

Prerequisites

Install SDSoC on Linux using a free 60-day trial and launch it [instructions]
Have a ZC702 (I used a ZC702 Rev 1.1)

Notes

Use the Zynq-7000 on the ZC702 or the ZedBoard available at [link] and [link] to play around with SDSoC.

The ZC702 is $895.00 and the ZedBoard is $449.00.

The key benefit is that you’ll only need 2 GB of host memory to build images for the board.

If you use a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC on a ZCU102 (available at [link]), you’ll need 14 GB of host memory and $2495.00 for the board.

This advice applies to other situations where you’d like to use a Arm + FPGA fabric. Also long as you don’t need a hypervisor or the performance, the Zynq-7000 is a good, economical and fast platform for development (Zynq-7000 projects build in much less time).

Steps

1. Click Create SDx project

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2. Keep Application selected and click Next >

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3. Name your project lab1, keep Use default location clicked and click Next >

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Note: You can use any 3 to 40 character sequence of a-z, A-Z, 0-9, _ and -

Note2: In a regex: [a-zA-Z0-9_ -]{3,40}

4. (A) Select the zc702 and (B) click Next

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5. Accept defaults and click Next on the System configuration window

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6. (A) Select Matrix Multiplication and Addition and (B) click Finish

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You should see:

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At this point I diverge from the tutorial a little.

7. Click build (this step will take a significant amount of time).

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Note: this step took 1h:24m:29s.132ms, the entire output is [here].

If you need help accessing an SD card from in Ubuntu running on VirtualBox, running on Windows 7 click [here].

8. To copy the files to the SD card…

Type cd ~

Type cd workspace/lab1/Debug/sd_card

Type ls

You should see:

lisk_contents_of_sd_card_10

BOOT.BIN

image.ub

lab1.elf

README.txt

After replacing pfefferz with your path, type cp -f * /media/pfefferz/C002-DEEF/

Type ls -l /media/pfefferz/C002-DEEF/ to check that the files were copied

9. Eject the SD card

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10. Set up minicom

Close SDx and everything else (you’ll need to log out and back in)

Type sudo apt-get install minicom

Type sudo adduser $USER dialout

Log out, (A) click the gear icon, (B) click Log Out…

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Open a terminal and type sudo minicom -s

At this screen:

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Hit the down arrow until you hit Serial port setup

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Press Enter

At this screen type F to turn off Hardware Flow Control and type A, changing the serial device to /dev/ttyUSB0

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Things should look like:

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Press Enter to return to the previous menu

Press down until you get to Save setup as dfl

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Press Enter

You should see:

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Press down until you get to Exit from Minicom

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Press Enter

11. Set up the board

Plug the SD card in

Push it in:

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…till it clicks

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Set SW16 to boot from the SD card:

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Plug in the USB UART:

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12. If you’re running this in a virtual machine, managed by VirtualBox, then capture the USB UART in VirtualBox by (A) clicking Devices, (B) clicking USB and (C) clicking Silicon Labs CP2103 USB to UART Bridge Controller [0100]

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