Creating an BSP for Microblaze?

[Joel Sherrill]

On 12/4/2012 11:28 AM, Sebastian Huber wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On 04/12/12 16:09, Matthias Goldhoorn wrote:
>> Hello Devel's,
>> we are currently thinking about using rtems on out Suzaku-S Boards.
>> This boards carry an Xilinx Spartan FPGA, we currently using an
>> Microblaze Processor and µCLinux.
>> We maybe want to swap no rtems.
>>
>> First and most important question:
>> 1. Is there any ongoing work to create BSPs for the microblaze arch?,
> I don't know.

There was some email on the list in the past few months from someone who
appeared to be working on this. Search the email list for that.

I have a branch in my personal repo with a starting point for a port with a
BSP cut for the simulator in GDB. See http://git.rtems.org/joel/rtems.git/
>> I already saw that the gcc-toolchain was already created to build for
>> this target.
>> 2. If not, how log you are assuming do an Computer Scientist without
>> any RTEMS knowledge need to create an BSP for this?
>>
> Lets suppose the tool chain works, then the next step is to do the basic
> CPU port.  This includes primitive ABI settings like stack alignment and
> more complex stuff like context switching and interrupt handling.  You
> have to do the low level system initialization on a simulator or
> evaluation board (set up C runtime environment, cache, memory
> controller, PLL, etc.). This is largely operating system independent.
> You have to create drivers for basic thinks like the clock tick and
> console.  You have to learn the development environment for the FPGA.
> It is hard to estimate a time frame for all of this.  I would say its
> more than three weeks.  It might be more efficient to hire a company for
> basic support.
>
Agreed. I have done a lot of ports to new architectures and the time varies
based on availability and ease of use of simulator, what can be done on
the simulator, and how complicated the desired BSP really is.

I don't like to do marketing on the mailing list but if you want someone to
do this or just consulting on the steps, email me and Sebastian off list.

-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research & Development
joel.sherrill at OARcorp.com        On-Line Applications Research
Ask me about RTEMS: a free RTOS  Huntsville AL 35805
Support Available                (256) 722-9985