FPGA ChipScope

About this page

We use ChipScope Pro from Xilinx as a debugging tool during the firmware development.

Install and Run ChipScope

Windows

Just install and run. Should work out of box.

Linux (Ubuntu)

ChipScope also works on Ubuntu (Linux). But it's tricky to get it working. ChipScope consists of server and client.

Start server

# Load Xilinx related 
loadXilinx    # see ref: How to install Xilinx ISE for detail

# Run server (check user guide for more details)
cse_server  

Start client
analyzer is the command to start ChipScope client, which is a script that calls sh. However in Ubuntu, sh has issues to start analyzer, so you need to change #!bin/sh to #!bin/bash in the first line of script file the first time you run this program. The file is locate at /path/to/Xilinx/bin/lin64/unwrapped/analyzer in my installation. Once you have it changed.

# start ChipScope analyzer
analyzer &  

Reference
How to install Xilinx ISE on Linux
https://github.com/lerwys/Installation_instructions/blob/master/FPGA_TOOLS_log

Documentation and Tutorial

Official Documentation

• ChipScope User Guide
• Datasheet for each cores
  • ICON: http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/ip_documentation/chipscope_icon.pdf
  • ILA: http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/ip_documentation/chipscope_ila.pdf
  • VIO: http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/ip_documentation/chipscope_vio.pdf

Tutorial

• Debugging with ChipScope
  • http://www-mtl.mit.edu/Courses/6.111/labkit/chipscope.shtml
• Using ChipScope
  • http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs150/sp13/resources/ChipScope.pdf
• NOTE: Both of them are good.
• Tutorial from Xilinx
  • http://www.xilinx.com/products/software/chipscope/chipscope_ila_tut.pdf

Project

• Chipscope project files can be found in Chipscope folder.
• IP cores generated using coregen is under directory ipcore_dir, which includes verilog synthesis wrapper for ICON and ILAs.
• Example code that shows how to instantiate and connect these cores can be found in QLA25AA128.v under Verilog folder.