Spartan-6 FPGA Embedded Kit Reference Design and Documentation

The Spartan®-6 FPGA Embedded Kit enables rapid software application development as well as easy customization of the processor subsystem to meet application requirements.

Note: For information on upgrading from the Spartan-6 FPGA SP605 Evaluation Kit or other domain-specific Spartan-6 design platform, see the specific steps at the bottom of this page.

• Download Zip Files with Reference Designs & Documentation:
  • Reference Designs & Docs for ISE® Design Suite 11.4
  • Reference Designs & Docs for ISE Design Suite 12.1
  • Reference Designs & Docs for ISE Design Suite 12.2

Following are the list of documents & reference designs included in the Spartan-6 FPGA Embedded Kit (included in the Zip file above).

• Hardware Setup Guide
  The Hardware Setup Guide provides step by step instructions to get the SP605 board setup correctly and run the out-of-box demonstrations.
  

• Getting Started Guide
  

  The Getting Started Guide provides an overview of the kit contents, hardware setup steps and review of the demos. It also covers the steps for Installing the required ISE Design Suite tools as well as directions to get started with the detailed Hardware & Software Tutorials.

• Targeted Reference Design
  • MicroBlaze Processor Sub-System Design
    This MicroBlaze® Processor Sub-System (PSS) design is the starting point for embedded design using the Spartan-6 FPGA Embedded kit. The MicroBlaze PSS includes the most commonly used Embedded IP including:
    • 32-bit MicroBlaze Soft Processor with Memory Management Unit
    • Evaluation version of Tri-Mode Ethernet MAC (TEMAC)
    • MultiPort Memory Controller (MPMC)
    • On-Chip Block RAM and Parallel & Serial (SPI) NOR Flash memory controllers
    • Serial Interface IP – UART16550, I2C, SPI
    • Basic Embedded IP – Interrupt Controller, Timers, GPIO
    • Infrastructure – Bus infrastructure, Clock & Reset management IP
    • JTAG Debug IP – MicroBlaze Debug Module (MDM)
  • Reference Design Datasheet
    • Detailed datasheet-style documentation of the MicroBlaze Processor Sub-System including Block Diagram, address-map, pinout, FPGA logic usage & performance.
• Tutorials
• Software Tutorial
  This tutorial will guide you through the steps to start Software development using Xilinx SDK (Eclipse IDE) and the MicroBlaze Processor Sub-System. This will show you how to create Standalone (No OS) programs from simple Hello World designs to a more complex Board Test program. This will also how to boot a Linux platform for the MicroBlaze Processor Sub-System and provide pointers to start Linux development.
  
  
• Hardware Tutorial
  This tutorial will guide you through the steps to open the MicroBlaze Processor Sub-System using Platform Studio and add the Video Pipeline DSP blocks to recreate the out-of-the-box Embedded kit demo. This will also show you how to add ChipScope debug cores to monitor your embedded using the ChipScope™ Logic Analyzer.
• Demonstration Files
• MicroBlaze Processor Sub-system with Video Pipeline Demo
  
• This is the out-of-box kit demonstration design that includes the MicroBlaze Processor System with a Video DSP Pipeline and a webserver application controlling the DSP filter coefficients and video output. Source files for the demo including the software application and hardware design are included here.
• Additional Documentation
  • SP605 FPGA Base Evaluation Kit Documentation
    

    This includes SP605 Board User Guide, Schematics, PCB files as well as other base reference designs like MultiBoot and BIST designs.

  • SP605 FPGA Connectivty Kit Documentation
    This includes Connectivity Targeted Reference designs including PCIe®-Gigabit Ethernet bridge design, Chipscope IBERT design and related documentation.
• Upgrading to the Spartan-6 FPGA Embedded Kit

This is for users who currently have any of the following Spartan-6 kits:

• Spartan-6 FPGA SP605 Evaluation Kit
• Spartan-6 FPGA Connectivity Kit
• Spartan-6 FPGA DSP Kit

Upgrading to the equivalent of the Spartan-6 FPGA Embedded Kit is performed by the following steps:

1. Download the Embedded Targeted Reference Design from the link at the top of this page
2. Copy the Embedded kit demo image from the “CompactFlash_Demo_Image” directory in the Zip file above onto the Compact Flash drive.
3. Purchase the Embedded Development Kit (EDK) or download an evaluation, if not already available on your computer