ESC Boston 2019 Schedule Viewer

This half-day tutorial will provide the attendee on completion with the ability to create, program, debug, and develop applications for the Arm M1 and M3 processors based in the Xilinx FPGAs as part of the Arm Design Start Program.

To attend this tutorial NO FPGA experience is necessary, the tutorial is majority software focused, with hardware elements using Vivado’s IP Integrator (No VHDL or Verilog coding required)

The tutorial will be split into two sections. The first half of the tutorial will be focused on building a foundation of knowledge, while the second half will focus on the creation of a simple robot / motor control application. To maximize attendee participation and learning, both sessions will be a mixture of presentation of the theory and hands-on labs.

Part One – Introducing the fundamentals

• Introduce the Session & Presenters
• Application use cases for the M1 and M3 (5 Minutes) – Motor Control, Complex FSM Replacement etc
  • What devices can we target
• Architecture of the M1 and M3 (10 minutes)
  • Key Interfaces of the M1 and M3 cores – AXI, Clocks, JTAG etc
• Outline development process (20 Minutes) – What do we need in Vivado, SDK, Keil
• Lab 1 – Exploring the Architecture in Vivado
• Software development flow / Tool Chain
• Lab 2 – Saying Hello World
• Debugging your application
  

Part Two – Creating an application

In this lab we will use what we have learned in the first session to implement a simple robot / motor control application. This will not only build upon what we have learned in the first session but also introduce new concepts to the attendees such as motor control principles and interfacing the Arm M1 and M3 cores with the outside world.

• Introduction to the session and the objectives
• Lab – Create a real-world application using the Skills we have learned in the first half of the tutorial

• Vivado® 2018.2
• Xilinx Downloads - https://www.xilinx.com/support/download.html
• Digilent Board files from GitHub
• Navigate to https://github.com/Xilinx/XilinxBoardStore/tree/2018.2
• Arm IP from ARM Design Start FPGA
• https://www.arm.com/resources/designstart/designstart-fpga
• Arm Keil MDK Tools
• https://www.keil.com/download/product/

Takeaway

Attendees will understand how to implement and develop software for Arm Cortex M1 and M3 in FPGAs. These can be used for a wide range of applications from control and to system / IO management.

Intended Audience

Any HW/SW developer no FPGA development experience is necessary, only requirement is familiarity with C.