[meta-xilinx] Bitstream/Boot.bin/etc - Providers/Virtual targets

[Elvis Dowson]

On Feb 20, 2014, at 0:07, Alan DuBoff <aland at softorchestra.com> wrote:

> On Wed, February 19, 2014 11:54 am, Elvis Dowson wrote:
>> I too have been using Ubuntu for a while now, but bought a
>> RHEL 6.5 Workstation subscription, to try and get Vivado 2013.2 to
>> perform a distributed build.
> 
> OUCH!
> 
>> I think buying RHEL-6.5 subscription is a waste, and I should have
>> tried CentOS instead. So, if Fedora doesn’t work, try running the
>> Xilinx Vivado tools on CentOS instead.
> 
> If it worked it wouldn't be a waste. I figure it doesn't matter since Yocto is
> testing on Ubuntu 12.04 and 13.10 per the comments in the commit logs. As I
> said, if it would work it could be worth buying a license, even if to run it
> in a VM to build running on Ubuntu...
> 
> I have used 13.04 on a different zynq project I worked on last year, and no
> real issues building. I'm in a holding pattern with 13.10 and will move to
> 14.04 when it comes out.

I haven’t attempted to build on RHEL-6.5 yet, for Yocto. I was mainly concerned
with improving synthesis times with the Vivado toolchain. A design that I’m 
working on takes about 33 minutes for synthesis and 10 minutes for implementation.

I was looking at options to reduce that time.

On the same workstation, running Ubuntu, a zynq image takes around 20 minutes
for a core-image-minimal build.

The only issue I have with the newer distros is that Ubuntu-13.10 and 14.04, and
RHEL-7.0 Beta all have switched to Gnome 3.x.

This causes a bit of issues with other commercially tools, like IBM Rational Rhapsody,
because it is primarily intended to run on Windows, and uses some libraries to emulate
execution under Linux.

So, for the moment, I’m going to stay on with Ubuntu-12.10 and RHEL-6.5, while
testing Ubuntu-14.04 at regular intervals.

I’m also waiting for better driver support for the new Apple Mac Pro 6-core Late 2013
model, for one of the Linux distros, so that I can run the Xilinx tools natively.

Performance using VMware Fusion just about matched that with a native installation
on a quad-core i7.

> 
>> There is also shell script issues to consider (bashism, etc), between
>> distros.
> 
> One of the things that I have always liked about Debian and it's offspring’s
> was the fact that it was always more simular to SYSV, so the init scripts were
> setup like UNIX, rather than the sysconfig that RH did use (not sure if they
> still do).
> 
> For my taste, Debian did it right.
> 
> All that said, the Xilinx Vivado tools are a real pile of crap, IMO. I'm not
> talking just on Linux, the FPGA programmer I was working with on my last zynq
> project only used Windows and they used to crap out on him all the time also.
> Either they hang and freeze the system or segfault and dump you out to a
> prompt in the middle of writing the flash or creating the boot.bin...and I see
> the addition of FPGAs being a huge advantage in today's embedded market.
> 

I’ve noticed that the Vivado tools can crash abruptly if it has no connection to the
Internet. This is a bit more pronounced on Vivado-2013.2. If you let it connect to the
Internet, it won’t crash as much.

For Zynq development, I find Vivado much more productive to work with than XPS-14.7.
Synthesis times is at least 3x with Vivado, for a standard base system build Zynq-7 design for
the ZC702. XPS takes a really long time.

I’ve been working with PlanAhead & XPS 14.x for a while now, and I think that Vivado-2013.x is
definitely an improvement.

I like working with Vivado IP integrator, and if you can spend some time going through the 
Vivado tutorials, it would be time well spent, learning its features.

Regards,

Elvis Dowson



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