Xilinx Virtex-II PRO

I began working with the new Xilinx board that came in recently. The Virtex-II PRO (XC2P30) has two PowerPC Processors and is more powerful than the boards we normally use. The use of expansion boards such as DDR SDRAM will allow the board to grow with our applications. The board will primarily be used as a host for embedded processor cores and complex digital systems.

Virtex-II PRO FPGA

I installed the software that came with FPGA board. The EDK (Embedded Development Kit) is a set of tools for designing embedded processor systems using programmable logic, and supports the IBM PowerPC processors and the Xilinx MicroBlaze soft processor core. The main tool is the "Platform Studio". It integrates all of the steps from design entry to debugging and verification.

I began reading the "Platform Studio User Guide", provided by Xilinx, to learn how to create a basic embedded hardware system using one of the PowerPC cores.

The steps taken in creating a hardware system for EDK using the Xilinx Platform Studio (XPS) are:

1. Create a New XPS Project
2. Select a Target Board
3. Select the Processor to be Used
4. Configure the Processor
5. Configure IO Interfaces
6. Specify Internal Peripheral Settings
7. Specify Software Configuration
8. View System Summary and Generate
9. View Peripherals and Bus Settings
10. Generate Bitstream
11. Download Bitstream and Execute