Wind River Pulsar is an alternative to PetaLinux for our Zynq SoMs, and as we go forward it is our intent to continue to enhance the user experience to make it the go-to platform for embedded application development. PetaLinux still has a place as an easy-to-use memory-resident kernel and root file system, but Pulsar uses a non-volatile RFS allowing for a much larger set of packages that provide considerable flexibility in customizing the environment for production and development. It also has the advantage of the optional security shield, providing long term support and upgrades to incorporate enhancements and provide protection against unwanted intrusions.
As with any Linux system, PL logic is accessed via the standard (or custom) drivers provided with the PL IP. On an ARM-based system that lacks a BIOS, you must inform the OS of the location and characteristics of new hardware through the device tree. And depending on the IP and it's inclusion in the mainline version on which Pulsar is based, you may also need to update the kernel configuration and rebuild the kernel using the free wr-core tools available from Wind River OpenSourceLabs. Kernel drivers are accessed programatically via ioctl, read and write, and sysfs drivers can be accessed directly from user space (even command line) by manipulating entries under the /sys folder.
We are currently working on a couple of tutorials, one for SPI and one for I2C devices, that were implemented for our new MicroZed IIoT kit. These should be available under the IIoT Kit reference design section of this website over the next couple of weeks, so watch for them.
Typically if you are adding custom IP you will need to rebuild at least a subset of the Pulsar components using the Wind River wr-core environment, available from Wind River Open Source Labs. The way to get started is to install that environment, and follow the readme in the repository for compiling the Pulsar components. This will give you some practical experience putting the image together from scratch, and this experience will make the steps in the reference designs more familiar when you see them.
I'm also a bit curios if such a document has been created yet. Lacking something to tell me how to start the merge between Vivado PL output (our custom IP) with the Pulsar wr-core building process. More investigation and testing will ofcourse get me there but it would be good starting point for us newcomers :-)
We have a PicoZed board so that explains why I didn't find it among those links, but this is great. Now I know what steps to take when trying to make out custom PL implementation. As the newbe I am in my previous trial and error approach it was difficult seprating what is xilinx petalinux only stuff among their documentation.
We have a PicoZed board so that explains why I didn't find it among those links, but this is great. Now I know what steps to take when trying to make out custom PL implementation. As the newbe I am in my previous trial and error approach it was difficult seprating what is xilinx petalinux only stuff among their documentation.
