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Training for Zedboard and alike

Former Member

Hello,
I am an EE masters student at USC and own a Zedboard. I have studied FPGA's, VHDL/Verilog so far but want to make the jump to the software side. I am looking to do high level design using cpu's like Zyng which have both a processor and programmable logic. I would also like to learn linux and maybe write my own scripts.
I can program in python and C very inefficiently, basically looking up syntax for every line of code for even a simple program. So what is the next step for someone like me?

C,C++, Real time operating systems, more scripting languages?

As I said above I am trying to stay closer to higher level than low, so if I could, I would def stay away from programming in arm assembly and moving data from register to register and stuff.

  • 0

    Hi digitalzombie,

    If you are looking at getting Linux up and running on your ZedBoard, you can use one of the reference designs we have on this site. If you are looking at getting into doing your own Linux builds, then PetaLinux is an easy way to go.

    We have some new On Demand SpeedWay trainings posted in the training sections of this site. One of them covers software development on Zynq and the other is a bit more advanced which covers PetaLinux tools on ZedBoard and MicroZed targets.

    If you are looking at furthering your application coding skills, I personally recommend a book called "Advanced Linux Programming" which you can read online for free.

    http://www.advancedlinuxprogramming.com/

    There are lots of good examples in there to give you an idea on how to write an application and some different methods for structuring your application so that it does not get too unwieldy.

    After that, Linux driver development is a very demanding skill which requires some hardware knowledge and C programming knowledge to bridge those two worlds with some kernel coding.

    I remember when I was in school, ARM hardware platforms were quite expensive so the EE lab did not have very many for us to share. Most of the time we were forced to develop our ARM software using the ARMulator. <nostalgic tear forming in eye>

    Luckily, we now live in a very exciting period in history where it is easy for anyone to get into embedded applications development since there are so many community-based and low-cost resources like ZedBoard.

    Best of luck to you!

    Regards,

    -Kevin

     

  • 0 in reply to zedhed

    Hi Kevin,
    Thank you for your comment.
    Considering that I am an Electrical Engineer who is moving towards Digital Hardware engineer while getting my masters, which one would be better for me to take?
    a)Java/C++ Class
    B) C heavy operating systems Class?

    Thank you.