01 Getting Started with the Trenz TE0950 Board

Overview

The AMD Versal AI Edge Series is a series of devices built on 7nm which was introduced by AMD in 2021 to target applications such as ADAS, computer vision, robotics, ultrasounds, endoscopy and Aerospace and defense.

This series includes traditional Programmable Logic (PL), dual-core Arm® Cortex®-A72 application processor, dual-core Arm Cortex-R5F real-time processor and an AI Engine-ML array.

The Trenz TE0950 board is equipped with an AMD Versal™ AI Edge VE2302 device which includes an AIE-ML array of 34 tiles and a PL with 150K LUTs and 464 DSP58. One interesting thing about this device is that it is available in Space Grade.

With a price < 1000$, the TE0950 is, for me, a good board to get started with AMD Versal and AI Engine.

For more details about the board and alternatives I recommend the following article by Whitney Kitter:

https://www.hackster.io/news/te0950-new-amd-versal-ai-edge-development-board-from-trenz-electronic-dc0417da666d

First Test of the board using the prebuilt image

When testing a new board, before trying my own design, I like to test it with a reference design to ensure it is working correctly on my side.

Trenz is providing a reference design we can use for that:

https://wiki.trenz-electronic.de/display/PD/TE0950+Reference+Designs

I have downloaded the following one:

In the folder te0950-rd\prebuilt\boot_images\23_1lse_8gb\hello_te0950 you can find a boot image. Just copy the BOOT.BIN to an SD Card.

Testing the board UART

First step is to make sure the board UART interfaces are accessible.

Connect a USB cable from the micro USB B Connector (JTAG/UART) to a PC and power-on the board.

Open the device manager application and ensure it detects the COM port for the UART

Boot from the SD Card

Set boot mode to SD Card (SW2[4:1] = X-OFF-ON-OFF) and plug the SD Card with the BOOT.BIN in the board

Power On the Board

Connect a Serial port terminal application (I am using Tera Term) with the following settings for the Serial Port

• Speed: 115200
• Data: 8-bit

The application will output an Hello World output showing that our board is correctly running

Conclusion and Next Step

We know now that our board is working correctly, we can now move to the next step which is to create our own Vivado Design. This is what I will show in the next project article.

Disclaimers

• AMD, Versal, and Vitis are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
• Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.