IP Core Versions not matching ISE Version

[cdeschryver]

IP core versions of IP cores from the Xilinx catalogue do not match the available/compatible core versions of the selected ise backend.

Thomas Fischer (8/7/2013 11:09 AM): This is a problem with the current backend hierarchy. It might take some time finding a "nice" solution for this.

[cdeschryver]

please check if this problem still persists now

[steffesm]

yes this problem still persists. the affected cores are the microblaze itself (using 8.40 a instead of current 8.50 c) and the interrupt controller named axi_intc (using version 1.03 a instead of current 1.04 a)

[cdeschryver]

Is there an easy way to update to the latest cores? Or should we stick with the current versions for downward compatibility? What do you think?

[steffesm]

I think looking at our future plans, when we want to move to Vivado we have to use these cores at some point because the ones we are using now wil probably not be available in this new Suite. It is probably easier to do this before this move to eliminate a source of errors.

It could be possible to just switch out the old cores for the newer versions but I don't know which Problems this could cause and which new bugs can be introduced through this.

[cdeschryver]

Ok, could you please go on and exchange them? Please move on core by core and document your observations carefully. Thx Chris

[steffesm]

My first investigations and tests indicate that changing the core version should not have any impact on the functionally correctness of the generated Designs.

The Synthesis Reports contain some Warnings about floating, unconnected and not driven signals, but most of these are also contained in the Synthesis Reports without Version changes.

Until now i used the GPIO example which ran without any complications and problems. I will do further tests with other examples which I expect to aso work correctly.

@cvoinea Could you provide me some additional working examples i could try to test with the newer core versions?

[cdeschryver]

Hi Markus, some details about what should do: 1) Please create a separate branch for this work from the latest development revision. 2) Create a test setup with which you can check if everything works. Add a list of the cores to be changed. Commit this together with the reference results. 2) Exchange first core, run loopy, check results, update core list if successful. Repeat until errors occur. Commit regularly to keep working intermediate steps.

HTH Cheers Chris

[steffesm]

I exchanged now every core and the Design still works, not a single error occured in the whole process. This is the URL of my created branch: https://github.com/steffesm/msdlib.loopy/tree/coretest/work

Update: sorry, I forgot to push most of my commits, now the branch is up to date.

[steffesm]

To Implement the change into the Generator you just need to change the Parameter HW_VER in the Sections microblaze to 8.50c and axi_intcto 1.04a inside the file temp/edk/system.mhs ( see my commits e4133c7426757e1671afdcde6a844f412a3e1337 and 99d2ed752ec0ea83542963704c2395f8f2243886)

[steffesm]

I just looked through the Java code and it looks like ISE 14.6 was already supported by the tool including microblaze version 8.50.b and axi_intc version 1.04.a. Probably there was some testing done before and there were only minor changes to test from ISE 14.6 to 14.7. Additionally the Build script was not updated and called the generator with the argument -w ise14.4.

Following this, the next step is to add ISE 14.7 to the list of supported Workflows and include it in the source code and to update the build script.

[cdeschryver]

Good news! Just go ahead with that I suggest and raise a pull request when everything is updated.

[steffesm]

I raised the Pull Request. I tested everything i changed, thanks to the modularity, nothing else should be affected. I also changed the build scripts in the examples to now use the new introduced Workflow. (I think I forgot to mention this last point in the pull request.) After merging the pull this Issue should be fixed. I will also write a Page in the Wiki how to add a new Workflow, because we will definitely need this knowledge later.

[cdeschryver]

fixed by #14