Specifications

Embedded System Tools Guide (EDK 6.2i) www.xilinx.com 47

UG111 (v1.4) January 30, 2004 1-800-255-7778

Tool Invocation

Users can also specify the flow to use for running the Xilinx implementation tools. The

available options are XPS (Xflow) and ISE (Project Navigator) flow. Note that if the design

is a sub-module, users must use the ISE flow. Please see the “ISE Project Navigator

Interface” section described later for details on how to add design components and files to

ProjNav project using XPS.

HDL and Simulation

This tab allows the user to specify the HDL (VHDL or Verilog) to be used by PlatGen and

SimGen. Users can also specify the location of various simulation libraries. For details on

simulation libraries, please refer to SimGen tool.Users can specify the simulation tool of

thier choice. Currently, EDK supports ModelSim and NCsim. Users can also specify the

current simulation mode they want to use. These options are saved into the XMP file.

Required Files

If XPS (Xflow) is chosen to run the implementation tools, XPS expects a certain directory

structure in the project directory. For each project, the user must provide User Constraints

File (UCF). The file should reside in data directory in the project directory and should have

the name <mhs_name>.ucf. Users are also expected to provide an iMPACT script file. This

file should reside in etc directory and should be called download.cmd. If these files do not

exist, XPS will prompt the user to provide these files and will not run XFlow.To run Xilinx

Implementation tools, XPS uses two more files, bitgen.ut and fast_runtime.opt from etc

directory. However, if the two files are not present, XPS copies the default version of these

two files into that directory from the EDK installation directory. To change options for

Xilinx implementation tools, the user can modify the two files. Note that when a new

project is created, if the data and etc directories do not exists, XPS creates these empty

directories in the prjoect directory.

Tool Invocation

After all options for the compiler and library generator are set, the tools can be invoked

from the

Run submenu in the Main menu. The main toolbar also contains buttons to

invoke these tools.

There are two different flows in the EDK platform buildig flow, the hardware flow and the

software flow.

Software Flow

The software flow involves buiding up the software part of the embedded system. There

are two important steps:

1. Generate Libraries: This button invokes the library building tool LibGen with the

correct MSS file as input.

Compile Program Sources: This button invokes the compiler for each software

application which needs to be compiled with in XPS. with correspondfsing program

sources. It builds the executable files for each processor. If LibGen has not been

executed, this button first invokes LibGen.

Hardware Flow

The hardware flow involves buiding up the hardware part of the embedded system. There

are two important steps: