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The builder has two major jobs:
* generate an image core file which reflects the FPGA image
configuration given by the user
* invoke Xilinx toolchain to actually build the FPGA image
For this purpose it needs to know where to find the FPGA source tree.
This tree can be give by the -F option.
The code that represents the user configurable part of the image is
written to a file called <device>_rfnoc_sandbox.v. To generate the file
these configuration files are needed:
* io_signatures.yml: A file describing the known IO signatures. This file
is global for all devices and contains the superset
of all signatures (not all signatures are used by all
devices). It resides in usrp3/top/ of the tree given
by -F.
* bsp.yml: A file describing interfaces of a specific device such as AXIS
transport interfaces or IO ports as well as device specific
settings. It resides in usrp3/top/<device> of the tree given by -F.
* <image>.yml: a file provided by the user with freely chosen name.
It describes which elements the image should contain
(RFNoC blocks, streaming endpoints, IO ports) and how
to connect them. The file also contains image setting
such as the CHDR width to be used.
The script uses mako templates to generate the sandbox file. Before the
template engine is invoked sanity checks are executed to ensure the
configuration is synthactic correct. The script also build up structures
to ease Verilog code generation in the template engine. The engine should
not invoke more Python than echoing variables or iterating of lists or
dictionaries. This eases debugging as errors in the template engine are
hard to track and difficult to read for the user.
All Python code is placed in a package called rfnoc. The templates used
by the builder are also part of this package. image_builder.py contains
a method called build_image which is the main entry point for the builder.
It can also be utilized by other Python programs. To align with the
existing uhd_image_builder there is also a wrapper in bin called
rfnoc_image_builder which expects similar commands as the uhd_image_builder.
For debugging purpuse the script can be invoked from host/utils using
$ PYTHONPATH=. python bin/rfnoc_image_builder <options>
When installed using cmake/make/make install the builder installs to
${CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX}bin and can be invoked without specifying a
PYTHONPATH.
One can also install the package using pip from host/utils
$ pip install .
Image config generation can also be done from GNU Radio Companion
files. The required GRC files are merged into gr-ettus.
Example usage:
$ rfnoc_image_builder -F ~/src/fpgadev -d x310 \
-r path/to/x310_rfnoc_image_core.grc \
-b path/to/gr-ettus/grc
Co-Authored-By: Alex Williams <alex.williams@ni.com>
Co-Authored-By: Sugandha Gupta <sugandha.gupta@ettus.com>
Co-Authored-By: Martin Braun <martin.braun@ettus.com>
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