Platform Studio

Software Development Overview

The embedded software platform defines, for each processor, the drivers associated with the peripherals you include in your hardware platform (the board support package), selected libraries, standard input/output devices, interrupt handler routines, and other related software features. Your XPS project further defines software applications to run on each processor, which are based on the software platform.

Once your hardware platform is populated with processors and peripherals and the address map is generated, you are ready to configure your software platform settings and generate your BSP using XPS. This will produce a set of platform-specific header files that you can reference in your application sources.

XPS provides an interactive development environment that allows you to specify all aspects of your software platform and manage your software applications. XPS maintains your software platform description in a high-level form in the Microprocessor Software Specification (MSS) file. The MSS file, which is an editable text file, together with your software applications, are the principal source files representing the software component of your embedded system. Together with libraries and drivers from the EDK installation, plus any custom libraries and drivers for custom peripherals you provide, XPS is able to compile your applications, including software components specified in the MSS, into executable ELF files ready to run on your processor hardware platform.

The executable ELF files can reside in on-chip or off-chip memory, or span both. XPS can merge on-chip sections into the configuration bitstream used to configure the FPGA, thus initializing on-chip BRAM blocks. You can use utilities provided in XPS to store off-chip sections in non-volatile memory devices, such as flash, which can be executed directly or bootloaded into other on-board memory devices. During system prototyping, XPS can dynamically download your executables to the board via the JTAG cable connected to the FPGA. The software debugging facility of XPS can control and monitor execution of your application on the FPGA over the same JTAG cable.

XPS contains a simple source code development environment you can use to develop and compile your applications. EDK also includes Platform Studio SDK, which is a complementary program to XPS that helps you with the development of software application projects. It is based on the Eclipse™ open source standard, providing a feature-rich C/C++ code editor and compilation environment. SDK also supports debugging and graphical profiling of your applications.

To begin specifying your software platform, proceed to Assigning Drivers, Libraries, and Operating Systems.