PPC Linux SoC on Virtex4 in 4 hours !?

Setting up MicroBlaze-uClinux on new FPGA board is a matter of hours -
with PPC linux, well there are gurus around claiming that it can be
done
within 4 hours - so far I have been very sceptical against such claims
mainly as I had until 10 minutes ago never created a Xilinx FPGA PPC
system with linux booting capability

So my schedule was

1 New V4 PPC system with EDK (complete from scratch)
2 ppc u-boot, compile test working
3 ppc uClinux, build load run, console prompt
==================
=> 2.5 days work

that is a defenetly more than 4 hours, but hey I believe
now that some guy with extensive linux-ppc-fpga experience
could have managed it all in 4 hours. First time try til
succesful linux prompt its just me who needed a bit more :)

When its done it always simple, the PPC capable linux SoC
requirements are actually same as for the microblaze uclinux
ram, intc, timer, uart,
then load linux.bin start and you get console prompt!

so my way to working PPC (uc)linux (with MMU !) was

1 VMWARE player, KDE 3.5/SUSE
2 http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~pml/uclinux_powerpc/
3 build
4 WinXP, EDK 8.1 SP1, BSB new design, add uart, timer, plb sdram
5 configure, start bootloader,
6 wath the uclinux to boot up

I had to run synthesis maybe 8 or 9 times to get 'linux-ready'
bitstream, and I spend lots of time trouble shooting the kernel
as I used old version (make copied the new kernel to tftboot
not to tftpboot from where I fetched it...)

jipii jeee!!!

Antti
PS at the same clock frequency the V4 PPC design seems to
use less power (V4FX12-363 is not warm at all!) then similar
microblaze design in the same device

.

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