Embedded Systems

Cheat Sheet
XPS TOOL FLOWS

MHS (Microprocessor Hardware Specification) - Defines the

components of a embedded system processor system, including: Bus
Hardware Platform Creation
Architecture, Peripherals, Processor, Address Space, External Ports,
Hardware Platform Verification (Simulation)
Interrupt Request priorities and the connectivity of the system
Software Platform Creation
MSS (Microprocessor Software Specification) - Contains directives for
Software Application Creation and Software Verification
customizing operating systems, libraries, drivers and file systems
(Debugging)
MPD (Microprocessor Peripheral Description) - Defines the interface of
Creating/Importing User Defined Peripherals
the peripheral. It lists ports, bus interfaces, parameters and default
values. MHS overwrites MPD
Platform Generator (PlatGen)
MDD (Microprocessor Driver Definition) - Contains directives for
Creates an implementation netlist of a bus-based subsystem
customizing software drivers
Library Generator (LibGen)
PAO (Peripheral Analyze Order) - Contains a list of HDL files that are
Generates libraries and drivers for embedded processors
needed for synthesis and defines the analyze order for compilation.
Simulation Generator (SimGen)
Used when the user peripheral is in HDL format
Generate a simulation environment including simulation models, BBD (Black Box Definition) - Manages the file locations of optimized
HDL wrappers, and simulation scripts
hardware netlists for the black box sections of a peripheral design.
Used when the user peripheral is in netlist format
Xilinx Microprocessor Debug (XMD)
Facilitates a unified GDB interface as well as a Tcl interface for BMM (BlockRAM Memory Map) - Contains a syntactic description of
how individual BlockRAMs constitute a contiguous logical data space
debugging programs

GNU Debugger (GDB)

Simulation libraries compilation

Set enviroment variable MODELSIM = <modelsim>\modelsim.ini

Set environment variable MTI = <modelsim>\win32
compxlib s mti_se f all l vhdl from <xilinx>/vhdl/src directory
Create/Import Peripheral Wizard (CreateIP)
Create your own peripherals and import them into EDK compliant compxlib s mti_se f all l verilog from <xilinx>/verilog/src directory
compedklib X . o edklib from <xilinx>/vhdl/mti_se directory
repositories or Xilinx Platform Studio (XPS) projects

Provides a unified interface for debugging/verifying MicroBlaze

and PowerPC systems during various development phases

EDK
MHS File
system.mhs
Processor IP
MPD Files

PlatGen

User IP Files
system.ucf

Source Code

Source Code

Synthesis

Compile

MSS File
system.mss

EDIF
IP Netlists

Object Files

LibGen

ISE/Xflow

Link

Libraries

system.bit
MHS File
system.mhs
SimGen

Data2MEM

Executable

download.bit
ModelSim/NCSim
Simulator

Hardware

XMD/GDB