Demonstration project for the AXI DMA Engine on the ZedBoard
This project is designed for Vivado 2017.3. If you are using an older version of Vivado, then you MUST use an older version of this repository. Refer to the list of commits to find links to the older versions of this repository.
- Vivado 2017.3
- ZedBoard
This project demonstrates the use of the AXI DMA Engine IP for transferring data between a custom IP block and memory. A tutorial for recreating this project from the Vivado GUI can be found here:
http://www.fpgadeveloper.com/2014/08/using-the-axi-dma-in-vivado.html
To use the sources in this repository, please follow these steps:
- Download the repo as a zip file and extract the files to a directory on your hard drive --OR-- Git users: clone the repo to your hard drive
- Open Windows Explorer, browse to the repo files on your hard drive.
- In the Vivado directory, you will find multiple batch files (*.bat).
Double click on the batch file that is appropriate to your hardware,
for example, double-click
build-zedboard.batif you are using the ZedBoard. This will generate a Vivado project for your hardware platform. - Run Vivado and open the project that was just created.
- Click Generate bitstream.
- When the bitstream is successfully generated, select
File->Export->Export Hardware. In the window that opens, tick "Include bitstream" and "Local to project". - Return to Windows Explorer and browse to the SDK directory in the repo.
- Double click the
build-sdk.batbatch file. The batch file will run thebuild-sdk.tclscript and build the SDK workspace containing the hardware design and the software application. - Run Xilinx SDK (DO NOT use the Launch SDK option from Vivado) and select the workspace to be the SDK directory of the repo.
- Select
Project->Build automatically. - Connect and power up the hardware.
- Open a Putty terminal to view the UART output.
- In the SDK, select
Xilinx Tools->Program FPGA. - Right-click on the application and select
Run As->Launch on Hardware (System Debugger)
This project uses an example application for the AXI DMA that is located here:
C:\Xilinx\SDK\<version>\data\embeddedsw\XilinxProcessorIPLib\drivers\axidma_v<ver>\examples\xaxidma_example_sg_poll.c
The SDK build script creates an application and copies that source file into the application. See the readme in the SDK directory for more information.
Check the following if the project fails to build or generate a bitstream:
Check the version specified in the Requirements section of this readme file. Note that this project is regularly maintained to the latest version of Vivado and you may have to refer to an earlier commit of this repo if you are using an older version of Vivado.
All the projects in the repo are built, synthesised and implemented to a bitstream before being committed, so if you follow the instructions, there should not be any build issues.
Vivado doesn't cope well with long directory structures, so copy/clone the repo into a short directory structure such as
C:\projects\. When working in long directory structures, you can get errors relating to missing files, particularly files
that are normally generated by Vivado (FIFOs, etc).
Feel free to modify the code for your specific application.
If you port this project to another hardware platform, please send me the code or push it onto GitHub and send me the link so I can post it on my website. The more people that benefit, the better.
This project was developed by Opsero Inc., a tight-knit team of FPGA experts delivering FPGA products and design services to start-ups and tech companies. Follow our blog, FPGA Developer, for news, tutorials and updates on the awesome projects we work on.