Tutorial: Creating a Custom Bitfile

This page covers the creation and installation of a custom personality/bitfile (a modification of the vector adder sample project).

Building a Bitfile

Copy rev 2011_11_22 of the example project and set your environment variables if you have not done so already. You can make a small modification to the verilog code if you wish.

cd ~/pdk_sample/cae_vadd/phys
make

The bitfile will take a long time to create (while the Reference Manual states 2 to 4 hours; mine took 18 hours to finish). Be patient.

Packaging the Bitfile

cd ~/pdk_sample/cae_vadd/phys
make release

This will create a new directory (~/pdk_sample/cae_vadd.release/). The important file that is created is named cae_fpga.tgz.

Installing the Bitfile

Follow the instructions from section 9.4.7 to install the packaged bitfile.

1. Rename ~/pdk_sample/cae_vadd.released/#DATE#/cae_fpga.tgz to ae_fpga.tgz
2. Determine what your bitfile's signature should be
3. Copy the ae_fpga.tgz file to /opt/convey/personalities/#signature#

Any ideas? We need higher privilledges add files to the /opt/convey/personalities/ folder.

Finally, flush the MP cache:

/opt/convey/sbin/mpcache –f

Choosing a Signature

The documentation (Section 10.1.2.1 of PDK Ref) also mentions doing the following:

cp  –r /opt/convey/personalities/4.1.1.1.0  ~/#number=>65000#.1.1.1.0

Edit readme and PersDesc.dat.

Finally, you need to always set the CNY_PERSONALITY_PATH environment variable to the directory just created, i.e.

   export CNY_PERSONALITY_PATH=/home/my_dir/
    or
   setenv CNY_PERSONALITY_PATH  /home/my_dir/

where /home/my_dir is your home directory or the directory #number=>65000#.1.1.1.0 was created in.

After implementing the AE software model, copy the AE software model executable into the #number=>65000#.1.1.1.0/ directory with the file name caeemulator. This allows the model to be automatically executed when the personality is dispatched by an application. Alternatively, the CNY_CAE_EMULATOR can be used to define the full pathname of the AE software model executable

See Also

• Using a Custom Bitfile in C Code

References

• Convey PDK Reference Manual (.pdf) - Sections 9.4.6, 9.4.7, 10