MSS Configurator Run Through

Hi, I'm Hugh Reslan with Microchip's fpga business unit. In this video, we are going to go over the polarfire soc mss

configurator

. First we will see why you would use the mss

configurator

and then. We will see how to install and start the configurator and finally we will see how to configure an mss component. To start, why would you use the polarfire soc mss configurator well to get started from a software point of view when booting the system? the polarfire soc mss runs the startup code it gets from the polarfire soc hal. That startup code configures things like ddor, system log cache and mssios, etc. to configure this code and give it values. xml is generated by the mss configurator. that xml is then converted to c header files using polarfire's soc configuration generator.

These c header files are included in basic applications and provide values ​​for the startup code from a hardware point of view, certain signals may need to be rooted from the mss via the tela fpga to an i or so e.g. In the icicle kit, UART signals are routed through the fabric. It could also be the case that you want to take advantage of a fabric component, for example if you had an accelerator in the fabric or if you were using some RAM that is in the fabric, you can interface with the fpga hardware or fabric via of an mss structure or thickness interface handler and to allow you to do this, the mss configurator generates a book component that will match the configuration you just made. created and then you can import that component to the book to use it in the hardware flow and when I talk about the mssios configuration, if we look at the configurator in the io configuration tab, we can see we have many different titles, for example we have emmc which is in bank 4 and sd which is in bank 4.

These are the actual fpga pins that these signals are routed to. Now we can have emmc or sd and what signals do it. to the actual pin is determined by a mux and the value for this mox is set by the basic boot code, so depending on the configuration you use a different boot code must be generated and finally when it comes to the real software flow for polarfire soc. we have our polarfire soc mss configurator up here at the top of our software flow, on the left side we have our hardware, so we have a little red line here to show which side is which, so for our hardware flow we have We Need a book component that then allows us to execute the book flow, such as synthesizing the execution location and path of our design and generating a bitstream and then we can program from our book flow into our target, but the xml is the another output from the configurator and this is then used in the hss if you are configuring the system or in the basic flow if that is the only application that will run on the system and this is scheduled in the target to run at system startup.

Now let's have a Look at how we install and start the mss configurator. The mss configurator is installed by default with soc book version 12.5 and higher. You can download the book by going to microsemi.com selecting fpga and soc from products and services and here select fpga and soc design. tools select fpga design tools and then select soc book version 12.0 and later here this will take you to the product page and then you can select the downloads tab on the top right to download the book for windows and linux just have Note that if you are using Book, you will need to obtain a license to run it.

If you are using an icicle kit you can take advantage of the free silver licenses that are available for your kit and to do so go to the licensing section of the book and product page and here you can find information on how to request an icicle license. book. The other option you have, which does not require a license, is to install the polarfire soc mss standalone configurator. This is exactly the same as the package. with book but no license required, can be found under fpga and soc under products and services and then under fpga and soc design tools under soc design tools and then select polarfire soc mss configurator.

This again is the product page and it gives you information about the configurator and you can download it for Windows and Linux from the downloads tab when you have installed the mss configurator. An entry is usually created in the start menu, so if I search for mss, I have the standalone configurator and the one included in the book. installed and I have two options for the mss configurator available here and if I scroll down in all programs and open the installation folder for the soc book version 12.5 which is here, I can see that I also have a shortcut for the mss configurator placed in my start menu if this would not have appeared if the start menu entry had not been created or if I wanted to use the mss setter in the script flow, you can also start it directly from the standalone installation or from an installation from book if we look from book yes Open my book installation directory, open the designer folder and go to container 64.

If I simply type pf I am taken to the polarfire underline executable mss.exe which is the configurator launcher from mss. Now let's take a look at the settings. an mss component, I have the standalone mss configurator open here and there are two options when it comes to creating an mss component: you can create a new configuration or you can open an existing configuration from a saved configuration file, so that when you create a new configuration , all you have to do is give yourself a module name and this module name is actually the name that the component that is imported into the workbook will have, so if I call this demo mss you have to choose a package and in this case I am targeting the iso kit which is a mpfs part mpfs 250t es and then you select your package and again the icicle kit is a fcvg484 when you click ok the mss component build or configuration window opens so you can see various things different ones you have. to configure for example your mss clocks, your actual clock source, um frequency, you have your solution for your fabric interface controllers, so there are three masters and three slaves available and for the zero solution we have one master and one slave, thick one is a master and thick slave two is an axi for slave and fic3 is a master apb, so these fixes allow the actual mss block to interact with our struct and use any struct components we may have instantiated and generated as part of the book flow.

Next you have your i o configuration so this is where you configure your actual mss peripherals and what IOS they are going to use so this is what is partially used by the xml that the configurator generates and that xml actually configures or translates what is configured here , so if I enable the emmc for example on bank 4, these pins here are shown in green as there are no conflicts with other signals that might want to use any of these package pins listed here, but if I go into the configuration from SD and then I enable mssios for SD in bank 4, these have now been highlighted in red because I have two signals trying to use the same pin and the configurator gave me a warning or error so I couldn't generate this component until I resolved and the resolution could be to move my SD pins to another valid configuration or it could be to disable the SD completely.

You can then set your i o ref clock and i o settings for each of your banks and then you can also set your memory ddor is now quite useful if you are using the iso kit when you select lpddr4 all the settings in the tabs ddo topology controller initialization and timing are automatically populated with the iso kit defaults so you don't have to configure any of the values ​​in these tabs here and finally there is the miscellaneous tab which allows you to configure a few different aspects of the mss, so for example you could expose the ultrasound ports to the fabric or you could expose the j tag to both ports on the fabric.

You can also expose Fabric to mss interrupts if you want and you can also crash different iOS when you have configured a component. You can click Build here at the top right and simply select a folder where you would like to build. its mss component, so if I choose this icicle kit reference design folder here, the mss component is generated for me in the folder that I selected, so now that is complete, if we take a look at what the configurator creates , the first file is my demo. underline the mss.com file so that this file can open in the mss configurator and show me the configuration that I have used and I can update it and regenerate the component if I wanted to, so for example this shows each of the configuration options available in the mss configurator that have been used, the other file that is generated is a cxe file and this is an mss component that the book can identify and in the design flow of your book at the top there is an option to import an mss component and this is the file you would select to import.

Next we have our xml file and here we can see the configuration values ​​for the different aspects of our system, so this file will be used by the soc configuration generator to generate the c header files. for the basic applications that we might want to use and finally we have a report.html file that if I open it now it shows me the different parts or the different settings for the mss that I am using for the structure interface. Drivers I didn't enable any of them so I can see they are all selected as false. The only peripheral I enabled was the emmc and I can see that it is enabled in bank 4.

I am using the ddr and I can see that it is ddr4 and so on. The other option you have when using the mss configurator instead of creating a blank component from scratch is to use an existing configuration, so if I close the project I have open right now and then select the open project here option if Open the icicle kit reference design I downloaded from gearedup and go to the script support folder. Here there are two mss config files, one for sd and one for emmc, and if I open the mmc config file now I can see that the mss clocks are set, the mac gigabit ethernet was enabled so there is no option from settings in the clocks tab along with the ddr and I can see the clock frequency where the clock source frequency was set.

If we go into our solution, I can see that the slave interface for fix zero is enabled the master interface for fic1 and the master interface for fig3 and in the io settings I can see the different ios that are enabled and if I would like to update this layout, For example, if I wanted to enable i squared c on fabric, I can simply select fabric as an option for i squared c0. I haven't updated any of my mssm i o settings so this image doesn't change and then I can regenerate the component if I want and I can import it. a libra design and bring the updated xml to a basic project that