Specifications

Embedded System Tools Guide (EDK 6.2i) www.xilinx.com 43
UG111 (v1.4) January 30, 2004 1-800-255-7778
Software Application Management
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Editing Files
Double clicking on the source or header file in the Project View window opens the file for
editing. The editor supports basic editing functions such as cut, paste, copy and
search/replace. The editor highlights basic source code syntax. It also supports file
management and printing functions such as saving, printing, and print previews.
Mark Application for downloading to BRAMs
Active Software application ELF files which reside on FPGA’s BRAM memory need to
marked for downloading into BRAMs. This can be done by right clicking on the software
application and selecting “Mark for Download” menu item. Similarly, you can also
unselect the application for downloading to BRAMs. If an application is marked for
BRAMs, XPS passes these applications to the data2mem utility which initializes the
bitstream with BRAM information from the ELF files. XPS also passes these ELF files to
simgen to create appropriately initialized simulation models. By default, a software
application is assumed to be using BRAMs. Note that by marking an application for
download to BRAMs, no process gets invoked, but rather a flag is set up to indicate that the
application has to be downloaded at the proper step in the flow.
Application to be compiled outside XPS environment
Sometimes, users want to compile thier application outside XPS environment (e.g. in
VxWorks, Eclipse etc.), but they might want XPS to be aware of the ELF file. In such cases,
they should create an application project and specify the ELF file which they will be
creating outside XPS. However, users should not add any C-source files associated with it.
This indicates to XPS that user has an associated ELF file, but does not want to compile it
within XPS. Any changes that might require user to recompile his application (e.g.
MHS/MSS file change) must be managed by the user himself.
Bootloop Software Applications
For each processor, XPS adds an special bootloop software application. These applications
have a precompiled ELF associated with them. The pre-compiled ELF and the source file,
linker script and the make file used to comiple that ELF can be found in the EDK
installation directory. These applications are displayed at the top of the Software
Applications tree. Users can not modify sources and compiler options for these
applications. Users can only select to either download this application into BRAMs or not.
The bootloop application ELF files is a simple single-instruction application. The
instruction branches to itself thus creating an infinite loop. This is useful in cases where the
processor has started execution but the actual application has not been downloaded to
external memory. The bootloop prevents the processor from executing arbitrary
instructions. This application resides at the start address location of the processor. For
microblaze, the start address is 0x00000000, while for ppc405, it is 0xFFFFFFFC.
Xmdstub Software Applications
For every microblaze processor in design, an application called
<processor_instance>_xmdstub is created by XPS. The ELF file associated with this
processor is created as part of the library generation at <proc_instance>/code/xmdstub.elf
location. Users can decide whether to download this application or not. Typically, if any of
the active user applications is in XMDSTUB mode, then users would want to download
xmdstub.elf for that processor onto BRAM memory.