MicroBlaze Configuration for an RTOS Part 2 – Configuration Parameters

This is part 2 of a series of articles discussing the configuration of the Xilinx MicroBlaze when targeting an RTOS application. This series focuses on the software aspects of the MicroBlaze configuration and the impact of the various MicroBlaze configurations on an embedded application running under an RTOS. This article aims at helping developers and designers who must configure a MicroBlaze system. Especially early on in the development process where the final firmware is not available for benchmarking and tweaking. At these early steps it is often necessary to select a good approximation of the final configuration to have a good idea of the resource usage of the MicroBlaze.

This article will go into some details over the numerous configuration options available to the MicroBlaze. However, in order to keep the length of the article manageable, the cache configuration aspect will be left to be covered by a future article.

The Advanced Button

When opening the MicroBlaze configuration in Vivado you are greeted with the MicroBlaze Configuration Wizard. However, more importantly, is the “Advanced” button around the top left corner that is just begging to be clicked. Without pressing the Advanced button, the developer has the choice of various presets tailored for different implementation targets or application types. This article will obviously go over the Advanced configuration instead of the presets but before going over the Advanced configuration there are a few things to say about the first panel of the Configuration Wizard.

Read more: https://www.jblopen.com/microblaze-configuration-part-2/