Advanced Features and Techniques of Embedded Systems Development

Skills Assessment
(Offsite Login Required)

Course Information

Course Description

Advanced Features and Techniques of Embedded Systems Development provides embedded systems developers the necessary skills to develop complex embedded systems and enables them to improve their designs by using the tools available in the Embedded Development Kit (EDK). This course also helps developers understand and utilize advanced components of embedded systems design for architecting a complex system.

This course builds on the skills gained in the Embedded Systems Development course. Labs provide hands-on experience with the development, verification, debugging, and simulation of an embedded system. All labs use a hardware board, connected to a server, to which designs are downloaded and verified.

Level

Advanced

Training Duration

2 days

Who Should Attend?

FPGA design engineers, system architects, and system engineers who are interested in Xilinx embedded systems development flow

Prerequisites

Experience in C programming
Embedded Systems Development course or experience with embedded systems design and Xilinx EDK tools
Some HDL modeling experience
Basic microprocessor experience and understanding of PowerPC™-processor and MicroBlaze™-processor systems

Software Tools

Xilinx ISE™ 9.1 SP3
Mentor Graphics ModelSim 6.0c
EDK 9.1 SP1

Skills Gained

After completing this training, you will have the necessary skills to:

Assemble and architect a complete embedded system
Identify the steps involved in integrating user IP in a system
Use a Board Support Package (BSP) to target multiple operating systems
Apply advanced debugging techniques
Design a flash memory-based system and boot load from flash
Apply various techniques to improve performance

Course Outline

Day 1

Embedded Systems Development Review
Lab 1: Building a Complete Embedded System
External Memory Controllers and File Systems
Lab 2: External Memory Controllers and File Systems
Debugging Using the ChipScope Pro Analyzer
Lab 3: Debugging Using the ChipScope Pro Analyzer
OCM Bus
Software Performance Improvement

Day 2

Accelerating Performance in Hardware
Lab 4: Performance Tuning
Bus Functional Modeling Simulation
Lab 5: BFM Simulation
Interrupts
Board Support Packages (BSPs)
Lab 6: XilKernel and Interrupts
Boot Loader
Lab 7: Boot Loading from Flash Memory

Lab Descriptions

Lab 1: Building a Complete Embedded System – Develop hardware that incorporates IP cores to interface to push buttons, switches, LEDs, an LCD display, and serial communication. Develop an application that interacts with switches, push buttons, an LCD display, and serial communication. Generate and download a bitstream onto a hardware board connected to a server.
Lab 2: External Memory Controllers and File Systems – Design a system that includes an On-Chip Peripheral Bus (OPB) DDR IP core. Develop an application that performs file-related tasks on external memory.
Lab 3: Debugging Using the ChipScope Pro Analyzer – Perform simultaneous hardware and software debugging on stack-related errors with the ChipScope™ Pro Analyzer, GDB, and XMD.
Lab 4: Performance Tuning – Profile a simple piece of code, using the SDK profile tool, running on a processor and go through iterative steps of refinement to improve the performance by using caching and porting a repetitive function to hardware.
Lab 5: BFM Simulation – Create an EDK system that includes IBM CoreConnect bus architecture Bus Functional Models (BFM) and Bus Functional Language (BFL) constructs for an OPB IP. Simulate the OPB bus-based design to verify IP functionality.
Lab 6: XilKernel and Interrupts – Set up software settings to use the XilKernel operating system. Generate and use a BSP for XilKernel with an application that illustrates multithreading functionality and an interrupt handler.
Lab 7: Boot Loading from Flash Memory – Develop an application that performs desired tasks. Due to application size and resource limitations, store it in flash, load it through a boot loader program, and execute from external memory.