Embedded Linux on the Tria AUBoard-15P FPGA with Whitney Knitter
In her third and final video, Whitney Knitter covers building and running an embedded Linux image on the Tria AUBoard-15P using PetaLinux.
We’ve been following along with Hackster Pro Whitney Knitter’s Tria AUBoard-15P FPGA (field-programmable gate array) board tutorial series, with basic setup in the first video and software design in the second video. In her third and final video, Knitter covers the heavy stuff: building and running an embedded Linux image for the Tria AUBoard-15P using PetaLinux.
This will give you all of the benefits of an embedded Linux OS, plus the advantages of custom FPGA-based hardware. It has the potential for far more versatility than, say, a single-board computer. Whether you’re prototyping or deploying on the FPGA, it is very flexible.
That said, system resources will be somewhat limited and bottlenecked by the MicroBlaze soft processor, which runs within the FPGA’s programmable logic. The result is a stripped-down and barebones embedded Linux experience out of the box, but that’s perfect as the foundation for tailored applications.
Setting this up requires a lot of configuration, which Knitter goes through step-by-step. She starts with the XSA hardware definition file exported in the first video in the series, then proceeds from there. It is critical that kernel drivers and packages are enabled properly. The OS doesn’t know that it is running on an FPGA — as far as it is concerned, it is running on conventional hardware. So, it needs to know how to access the interfaces created within the FPGA’s programmable logic.
Before loading the image onto the Tria AUBoard-15P, Knitter suggests emulation in QEMU to verify everything works as intended. Assuming it does, you can then get the image on the Tria AUBoard-15P through the JTAG interface. Boot it up and you should be able to log into the terminal and ping an outside domain, demonstrating that the TCP/IP stack works.
That’s where Knitter ends the video, as the rest is up to you and what you need to get done. But her tutorial series should give you a starting point if you already have a Tria AUBoard-15P and provide valuable insight into its capability if you’re considering purchasing one.