On-Chip FPGA Debugging

[NatasaLingurovska]

Introduction

Use Xilinx® ChipScope™ to probe internal signals in your LabVIEW FPGA designs.  ChipScope™ provides tools for generating logic analyzer cores to be used on your FPGA, which allows probing and triggering signals in the FPGA.  Using the LabVIEW FPGA CLIP Node, you can instantiate these cores in your designs to perform on-chip debugging of LabVIEW FPGA designs.  For additional information on Xilinx® ChipScope™, see http://www.xilinx.com/tools/cspro.htm.

Requirements

For LvFpgaChipScope_2009 or 2010

LabVIEW 8.6 or later, LabVIEW FPGA 8.6 or later with the Compile Server installed, Xilinx® ChipScope™ 9.2 SP4 (LabVIEW FPGA 8.6) or Xilinx® ChipScope™ 10.1 SP3 (LabVIEW FPGA 2009)

For LabVIEW 2010 and LabVIEW FPGA 2010 or later, you will need the 2010 version of the example to generate the correct CLIP files for use with newer Xilinx versions.

For LV2013 and LV2014 Chipscope Debugging

• LabVIEW 2013 or later
• LabVIEW 2011 Runtime Engine
• LabVIEW FPGA Module
• LabVIEW Xilinx ISE Compile Tools*

*If targeting a Kintex7 Device in LV 2014 or later, LabVIEW 2013 Xilinx ISE Compile Tools must also be installed

Installation

For LvFpgaChipScope_2009 or 2010

1. Download and unzip the attached LvFpgaChipScope_<version>.zip.
2. Run setup.exe.  This installer will place the example files and NiFpgaDebuggingCLIP_Generator executable in your personal folder, such as My Documents.
3. Follow the steps attached to the DeveloperZone article here to incorporate ChipScope™ cores in your LabVIEW FPGA designs.

The included example files are for LabVIEW 2009.  To use the NiFpgaDebuggingCLIP_Generator with LabVIEW 8.6, you will need to install the LabVIEW 2009 Run-Time Engine.

For LV2013 and LV2014 Chipscope Debugging

1. Download and extract the contents of the attached LV2013 and LV2014 ChipScope Debugging.zip.
2. Follow the steps in the ChipScope Debugging with LV FPGA.docx located in the extracted folder.

Support

Please post questions and feedback for this tutorial here.

[A.N.Other]

Is there any word on when the 8.6 version of this tool will be available? This looks like it could be really useful but at the moment I can't use it! The examples aren't as important in my view but an 8.6 version of the tool itself would be much appreciated.

[Donovan_B]

You should still be able to use the tutorial from the linked document and the NiFpgaDebuggingCLIP_Generator from the attached document in LabVIEW 8.6.  To run the generator, you will need to install the

LabVIEW 2009 Run-Time Engine.

[A.N.Other]

Awesome, problem solved! Thanks a lot.

[tedwards]

Do I need a later version for this to run with LabVIEW 2010?

[Donovan_B]

The attached example files should upgrade to LabVIEW 2010 fine.  LabVIEW FPGA 2010 uses Xilinx 11.5 tools for all targets except Virtex-II targets, so the ChipScope interface may look a little different, but the steps should be pretty much the same.

[asbo]

Is anyone at NI considering making a video about this? I'd be interested in seeing a run-time demonstration of ChipScope with LabVIEW. Not setup or configuration necessarily, but a quick glance at how this will improve my development and debugging experience with FPGA.