FPGA Debug

HDL Verifier™ provides FPGA data capture and AXI manager features for debugging and testing implementations on FPGA or SoC device from MATLAB^® or Simulink^®.

• FPGA data capture — Observes signals from your FPGA design while the design is running on the FPGA. It captures a window of signal data from the FPGA, based on your configuration, trigger, and capture settings, and returns the data to MATLAB or Simulink.

• AXI Manager — Lets you read from and write to on-board memory locations from MATLAB or Simulink.

FPGA Data Capture

You must have HDL design to perform data capture. There are two FPGA data capture workflows:

• You have an existing HDL design.

  1. Use the FPGA Data Capture Component Generator tool to generate the data capture IP.

  2. Manually integrate the generated IP into your HDL design.

  3. Use the FPGA Data Capture tool or the generated hdlverifier.FPGADataReader System object™ to capture data.

  For an example, see Capture Temperature Sensor Data from AMD FPGA Board Using FPGA Data Capture.

• You have a Simulink model and an HDL Coder™ license.

  1. Use the HDL Workflow Advisor tool to generate the data capture IP and integrate it in the design.

  2. Use the FPGA Data Capture tool or the generated hdlverifier.FPGADataReader System object to capture data.

  For an example, see Debug IP Core Using FPGA Data Capture (HDL Coder).

For more detailed generation and data capture steps for both workflows, see Data Capture Workflow.

Key Capabilities

At run-time, from MATLAB or Simulink, you can:

• Specify trigger conditions that control when to capture the data. See Triggers.

• Specify a sequence of trigger conditions at multiple stages. See Sequential Trigger.

• Specify a capture condition that controls which data to capture. See Capture Conditions.

• Specify data types for the captured data. See Data Type.

• Specify number of windows to capture. See Number of capture windows.

Also, you can:

• Capture data from different clock domains by using multiple FPGA data capture IPs. See Capture Asynchronous Data.

• Capture large datasets up to two gigasamples by utilizing the external DDR memory connected to the FPGA. See Storage type.

• Include trigger input and output ports to each data capture IP. Use these ports to pass the trigger signal from one data capture IP to another. See Include trigger inport and Include trigger outport.

Supported FPGA Vendors and Interfaces

FPGA data capture supports these FPGA vendors and interfaces:

• AMD^®

  • JTAG

  • Ethernet

    • Programmable logic (PL) Ethernet

    • Processing system (PS) Ethernet

  • USB Ethernet

• Intel^®

  • JTAG

For the complete list of supported boards and interfaces, see Supported FPGA Devices for FPGA Verification.

AXI Manager

You must have HDL design to perform AXI manager operations. There are two AXI manager workflows:

• You have an existing HDL design.

  • For JTAG, PCI Express^®, or PL Ethernet interface — Manually add and integrate the pregenerated HDL Verifier AXI manager IP into your HDL design. For an example, see Access FPGA Memory Using JTAG-Based AXI Manager.

  • For PS Ethernet or USB Ethernet interface — You need not to include an AXI manager IP in your HDL design. The HDL design directly responds to read and write commands from MATLAB or Simulink.

    For a PS Ethernet interface, follow the setup steps in Ethernet AXI Manager for AMD Zynq SoC Devices. For a USB Ethernet interface, follow the setup steps in USB Ethernet AXI Manager.

  For more detailed steps for accessing memory-mapped locations with this workflow, see Set Up AXI Manager.

• You have MATLAB code or a Simulink model and an HDL Coder license.

  Use the HDL Workflow Advisor tool to add and integrate the AXI manager IP into the design. For examples, see Debug and Control Generated HDL IP Core by using JTAG AXI Manager (HDL Coder) and Use IP Core Generation to Access DUT Registers on Pure AMD FPGA Devices (HDL Coder).

For more detailed steps for accessing memory-mapped locations with this workflow, see Specify Insertion of AXI Manager IP (HDL Coder).

Key Capabilities

To read and write memory-mapped locations on the board:

• From MATLAB — Create an aximanager object and use the readmemory and writememory functions.

• From Simulink — Create a Simulink model and include the AXI Manager Read and AXI Manager Write blocks in it.

Supported FPGA Vendors and Interfaces

AXI manager supports these FPGA vendors and interfaces:

• AMD

  • JTAG

  • Ethernet

    • PL Ethernet

    • PS Ethernet (Not supported via HDL Coder workflow)

  • PCI Express (Not supported via HDL Coder workflow)

  • USB Ethernet (Not supported via HDL Coder workflow)

• Intel

  • JTAG

  • Ethernet

    • PL Ethernet

  • PCI Express (Not supported via HDL Coder workflow)

For the complete list of supported boards and interfaces, see Supported FPGA Devices for FPGA Verification.

Preregistered FPGA Devices with FPGA Debug

Install HDL Verifier Support Package

HDL Verifier supports FPGA data capture and AXI manager on the devices as described in Supported FPGA Devices for FPGA Verification. The HDL Verifier support packages contain the definition files for all supported boards. You may download one or more vendor-specific packages, but you must download one of the packages before you can use FPGA data capture or AXI manager.

To see the list of HDL Verifier support packages, visit HDL Verifier Supported Hardware. To download a support package:

• On the MATLAB Home tab, in the Environment section, click Add-Ons > Get Hardware Support Packages.

Set Up Hardware Board

Hardware boards supported by HDL Verifier require additional setup steps to connect to MATLAB and Simulink software. The Hardware Setup tool guides you through the hardware setup process. Use this tool to configure a target hardware board for use with FPGA data capture and AXI manager.

To open the Hardware Setup tool:

• In the install window, at the end of the installation process, click the Setup Now button.

• After installing the support package, use Get and Manage Add-Ons. When the installation is complete, in the Installed section of the Add-Ons panel, click the Options button to the right of the support package that you want to set up. Then, select Setup.

  To open the Add-Ons panel, click the Add-Ons icon on the left sidebar.

For more information on setup steps, see Guided Hardware Setup.