Building Custom AXI Interface Peripherals for ZYNQ Devices

As system complexities are growing day by day, the Zynq device alone is incapable of providing the same performance and the Pure RTL module or Programmable logic (PL) needs to be integrated along with the Zynq. As Zynq works with Advanced Extensible Peripheral (AXI), it becomes mandatory for FPGA engineers to gain a fundamental understanding of adding AXI Interface to the Verilog RTL. The AXI4 offers different variants to fit diverse application needs. Understanding of the simpler variants such as AXI Lite and AXI Stream Interface lays a foundation for building an understanding of the complex AXI4 variant such as AXI Full.   

This course focuses on the usage of the Vivado IP Integrator and Vivado RTL integration for building the custom AXI interface for pure Verilog modules. There are four ways to achieve the addition of the AXI interface to the Verilog RTL viz. Using Vivado IP Packager, Vivado RTL Integration, Using System Generator, Using Vivado HLS. The course discusses two methodologies viz. Vivado IP Packager and Vivado RTL Integration in details with a simple example along with the demonstration of the integration of the created IP with the Zynq device. It will also discuss the creation of some basic device drivers, showing how software can be written to access the registers on the custom peripheral.