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How to design Xilinx Versal and its essential architecture

The Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is Xilinx’s core product line. It is

a semiconductor device that can be programmed and reprogrammed

after production. FPGAs are helpful in various applications such as

aerospace and military, automotive, industrial automation, data center

and networking, and wired and wireless communications.

In addition to FPGAs, Xilinx provides design and development software

tools, including the Vivado Design Suite, the SDx Development

Environment, and the PetaLinux Tools. IP cores from the firm perform

various functions, including connection, memory interfaces, video and

image processing, and security.

Table of Contents

Xilinx Versal

Xilinx Versal is an ACAP family that integrates the capabilities of CPUs,

GPUs, DSPs, and programmable logic in a single device. Versal should

meet next-generation applications’ high performance

and power efficiency requirements in the data centre, 5G wireless, and

automotive sectors.

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Versal devices depend on a novel architecture known as the “Adaptive

Compute Acceleration Platform” (ACAP), which is a cross between an FPGA

and a system-on-chip (SoC). The ACAP combines the programmability and

flexibility of an FPGA with the integration and simplicity of use of an SoC,

allowing designers to create unique hardware accelerators and adapt

systems to their specific requirements.

Versal devices come in various sizes and configurations to satisfy the

demands of various applications. Devices in the series have up to 9 million

system logic cells, 6,840 DSP engines, and 8,520 AI engines. Versal also

supports a variety of high-speed connections, including PCIe Gen 5 and

DDR5.

The Vitis development environment, the Vivado design suite, and the Xilinx

runtime library are among the software tools produced by Xilinx to aid in

creating Versal-based systems (XRT). In addition, the business provides a

variety of IP cores for use with Versal, including networking, video and

image processing, and machine learning.

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The design process for Xilinx Versal

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Xilinx Versal FPGA

System-on-chips (SoCs) like the Xilinx Versal combine several forms of

programmable logic, CPU cores, memory, and other IP blocks onto a

single chip. Architecture definition, system-level design, IP integration,

functional verification, timing analysis, and physical design are some

stages of the Xilinx Versal design process. We will go through each step in

depth in this post, as well as some difficulties and best practices for

designing Xilinx Versal.

Architecture Definition

Defining the system’s architecture is the initial step in the design process.

This entails evaluating the system’s requirements and specifications,

choosing the proper CPU cores, programmable logic, memory, and other

IP blocks, and figuring out how to connect these elements. When defining

the architecture, performance, power consumption, size, and system cost

should all be considered.

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System-Level Design

Developing a high-level system block diagram that illustrates the links

between the various IP blocks is known as the system-level design stage.

This diagram serves as the overall design’s blueprint and aids in locating

any potential performance problems or bottlenecks. At this stage,

designers must also consider how the system will fall into various zones

and how data will move among them.

IP Integration

Once the system-level design is complete, designers can begin

incorporating the various IP blocks into the design. To accomplish this, the

IP blocks must conform to the system’s specifications, connect to the

proper interfaces, and test for functionality. Managing the design’s

complexity at this point is one of the significant difficulties because there

may be hundreds or even thousands of IP blocks to integrate.

Functional Verification

The process of ensuring the system operates as anticipated and satisfies

design requirements is known as functional verification. Test benches that

imitate the system’s behavior under various circumstances must be ready

to do this. Additionally, we must confirm the accuracy of the results.

Functional verification is a crucial step in the design process since it

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assures that the system will operate as intended and helps identify any

design flaws early on.

Timing Analysis

Making sure that the design complies with the system’s timing

requirements is done through timing analysis. This entails inspecting the

timing connections between various IP blocks to check that the setup, hold

periods, and clock frequencies are within the permitted range. Timing

analysis is crucial because functional problems or decreased system

performance may emerge if the design doesn’t adhere to the timing

specifications.

Physical Design

Physical design, the last stage of the design process, entails putting the

design onto silicon. This entails laying out the chip in great detail, planning

the routing and positioning of the various IP blocks, and running several

checks to ensure the design complies with production standards. In

addition, physical design requires balancing performance, power

consumption, and chip size, which is a difficult and time-consuming

procedure.

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Challenges and Best Practices

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Xilinx Versal design involves several problems, such as controlling design

complexity, ensuring the system fulfills performance and power

requirements, and reducing design time and cost. However, designers can

adhere to the following best practices to overcome these difficulties:

Use a top-down design approach:

Starting with a high-level system design, this method entails improving the

design at each procedure stage. This strategy reduces the possibility of

design errors while ensuring the system satisfies the requirements.

Reuse IP blocks:

Various IP blocks that can be helpful in various designs are in Xilinx Versal.

Reusing IP blocks can minimize design complexity and save time.

Use simulation and emulation tools:

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Design flaws are available early in the process before implementing the

design in silicon, with simulation and emulation tools. These tools can also

test the system’s performance and functionality in various scenarios.

Perform thorough functional verification:

A crucial step in the design process, functional verification helps ensure

the system operates as intended and meets design requirements.

Designers should develop thorough test benches for all potential

scenarios and edge cases.

Optimize power consumption:

Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling, power gating, and other

capabilities for power optimization are all included in Xilinx Versal. These

characteristics should incorporate into designs to reduce system power

usage.

Pay attention to timing closure:

One of the most challenging parts of the design process is timing closure.

To ensure the design satisfies the system’s timing requirements, designers

should employ timing analysis tools and use methods like clock domain

crossing and pipelining to shorten the time routes.

Use good design practices:

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Designers should adhere to sound design principles, including modular

design, appropriate naming conventions, and code commenting. This

could enhance the design’s readability, maintainability, and reusability.

Collaborate with other designers:

Creating Xilinx Versal is a difficult, multidisciplinary task requiring various

skills. For example, to ensure that the design satisfies the requirements

and is error-free, designers should work with other designers, system

architects, and verification engineers.

Finally, designing Xilinx Versal necessitates a strict and organized

methodology that includes several steps, from architecture specification

to physical design. Nevertheless, by adhering to best practices, designers

can overcome obstacles and produce high-quality designs that satisfy the

system’s performance, power, and cost requirements.

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Xilinx Versal Architecture

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Xilinx FPGA Chip

Xilinx Versal is a fantastic platform that you can use to create custom

hardware accelerators for all kinds of applications. It combines the power

and flexibility of FPGAs with the ease and integration of a system-on-chip.

The platform depends on adaptive compute acceleration (ACAP), which

has many processing engines like CPUs, DSPs, and programmable logic, all

connected to a high-speed network. This allows you to build specialized

hardware accelerators with excellent performance, low latency, and low

power consumption. Plus, it’s flexible and can adjust to changing

workloads through software-controlled engines and programmable logic.

The three main components are the processor subsystem, the

programmable logic subsystem, and the platform management

subsystem.

Processing Subsystem

The processing subsystem comprises several processing engines, such

as Arm Cortex-A72 application processors, Arm Cortex-R5 real-time

processors, Mali graphics processors, and other digital signal processors

(DSPs). The NoC connects these engines and may cooperate in carrying

out challenging tasks. Other peripheral interfaces included in the

processor subsystem include Ethernet, USB, PCIe, and DDR memory.

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One of its main characteristics is the processing subsystem’s capacity to

assign resources following the workload dynamically. Hardware

accelerators and processing engines controlled by software work together

to accomplish this. Software-controlled processing engines may be flexibly

assigned to various tasks as needed. In contrast, hardware accelerators

are designed to utilize the programmable logic subsystem and can tune

specific tasks.

Programmable Logic Subsystem

The Xilinx Versal Programmable Logic Subsystem will hasten the creation

and implementation of AI and other high-performance computing

applications. It sits on the Versal Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform

(ACAP). It combines high-speed interconnects, sophisticated networking,

and security features with programmable circuitry,

software-programmable computation, and memory.

The Programmable Logic Subsystem offers a highly programmable and

scalable platform. It allows programmers to balance performance, cost,

and power consumption for particular application requirements. With

high-speed serial transceivers and programmable I/O interfaces, it also

contains various programmable logic resources, including programmable

logic blocks, DSP slices, and memory blocks.

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The Versal ACAP platform offers a variety of software tools and libraries.

As a result, they speed up application development and deployment in

addition to their hardware capabilities. These include the AI Engine

software development kit. It also offers a unified software development

flow for the processing and programmable logic subsystems.

Platform Management Subsystem

In Xilinx Versal, the platform management subsystem oversees the entire

system, including power management, security, and system-level

operations. A security processing unit (SPU), a system management unit

(SMU), and a power management unit are some of the various parts that

make up the platform management subsystem (PMU).

Security Processing Unit (SPU)

The hardware component designated as the security processing unit (SPU)

is in charge of putting hardware-based security features into action.

Several security capabilities, including as secure boot, safe key storage,

and secure firmware upgrades, are offered by the SPU. In addition, the

SPU is segregated from the rest of the system to avoid unwanted access

and can offer a secure foundation for the entire system.

A crucial security feature offered by the SPU is a secure boot. The secure

boot ensures that only trusted software is loaded during the boot process

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to prevent malware or other unauthorized code from running on the

system. As the firmware and software components load throughout the

boot process, the SPU stores a chain of trust that confirms their reliability

and integrity. In addition, the boot process is interrupted, stopping the

system from starting if any component fails verification.

For the secure key storage of cryptographic keys needed for encryption

and authentication, the SPU is also available. To safely store keys and

restrict illegal access, the SPU employs specialized hardware-based key

management. This ensures that private keys and other critical information

are safe from hackers.

To ensure that the system is running the most recent, safe firmware, the

SPU also offers secure firmware updates. In addition, the SPU prevents

hackers from tampering with the firmware by downloading and verifying

firmware updates through a secure channel.

System Management Unit (SMU)

The system management unit oversees system-level activities for the

Xilinx Versal device (SMU). The SMU provides a variety of system-level

functionalities, including power management, thermal management, and

system monitoring.

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The main function of the SMU is power management. The SMU is in

charge of managing the system’s power consumption and ensuring that

electricity is supplied to the various components most efficiently.

Power-saving techniques used by the SMU include clock gating, power

gating, and dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS).

Thermal control is yet another crucial capability made available by the

SMU. The device’s temperature undergoes monitoring by the SMU. It is

also responsible for ensuring that it maintains within acceptable working

ranges. Several techniques, such as fan control, dynamic clock frequency

adjustment, and thermal throttling, are essential for the SMU to regulate

the temperature.

System monitoring is another essential capability provided by the SMU.

The system’s health and state, including voltage, temperature, and clock

frequency, are monitored by the SMU. Among the monitoring interfaces

the SMU provides for system administrators to keep a watch on and

manage the system are JTAG, SMBus, and IPMI.

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Comparison of Xilinx Versal to previous Xilinx architectures

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Xilinx Zynq fpga

The most recent Xilinx architecture, Xilinx Versal, marks a substantial

change from earlier Xilinx architectures. The following are some essential

distinctions between Xilinx Versal and earlier Xilinx architectures:

Integration:

The degree of integration is among the greatest distinctions between

Xilinx Versal and earlier Xilinx systems. Xilinx Versal will fully integrate as a

platform combining several processing units, programmable logic,

memory, and IO into one unit. Earlier Xilinx architectures, in contrast,

relied on separate devices for processing and programmable logic,

necessitating more complex system designs and using more power.

Flexibility

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Versal will have greater flexibility than earlier Xilinx architectures. It is

simpler to integrate with many systems since it supports a wide range of

I/O standards, memory interfaces, and connectivity options. Moreover, it

offers the dynamic function eXchange (DFX). This feature enables a single

device to change to meet changing needs by, for example, adding or

removing processing cores as necessary.

Lower Power Consumption:

Versal focuses on power efficiency. It has various features like

sophisticated power management, improved voltage control, and adaptive

power scaling that reduce power usage without sacrificing performance.

High performance

Versal offers much greater performance compared to earlier Xilinx

architectures. It can manage to demand compute-intensive applications,

high-speed networking, and complicated AI/ML workloads.

Performance-enhancing features include protected compute engines,

high-speed interconnects, and high-bandwidth memory.

Integrated System-on-Chip (SoC) Capabilities:

Versal combines conventional FPGA fabric with additional on-chip

elements. They include Arm processor cores, memory, and

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communication, to create integrated system-on-chip (SoC) capabilities. Its

integration improves efficiency and makes constructing systems that need

processing cores and programmable logic simpler.

Connectivity:

Ethernet, PCIe Gen4, and CCIX are just a few of the high-speed

connectivity options Xilinx Versal offers. Due to its ability to connect

quickly to many peripherals and other devices, the platform is helpful for

various applications.

Overall, Xilinx Versal is an appealing option for developers and system

designers since it is a highly adaptable platform with excellent

performance across various applications and workloads.

Related Posts:

1. Understanding the architecture and application of Xilinx Zynq

2. The Essential Guide to Crafting a Motherboard PCB Design

3. How to program, Architecture, and applications of Lattice FPGA

4. Where does the QuickLogic Eclipse FPGA Architecture Family play a

role?

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