Overview

The Vitis core development kit is modeled on the SDAccel™ programming and execution model. One benefit of the Vitis environment is its support for both data center and edge applications. This means that you can prototype your application on a standard data center platform, such as the Alveo™ Data Center U200 accelerator card, and then redirect your application to an edge platform when it is available. For more information, refer to Building the Host Program.

In the Vitis environment, you need to call the Arm cross compiler to build the main application code, and call the Vitis compiler to build the hardware kernels. You create one executable for the host (.elf) and one image for the hardware kernels (.xclbin). You will use the OpenCL API and Linux-based Xilinx runtime (XRT) to control the movement of data between the main application and the kernels, and to schedule the execution of tasks.

For embedded processor platforms (or projects), the Vitis environment only supports platforms running a Linux host OS with the XRT and ZOCL drivers added to the root file system. The platform creator needs to provide a sysroot for cross-compiling to the Arm core with the OpenCL include files and libraries. You will need to use the appropriate headers during host compilation.

To migrate from the SDSoC environment to the Vitis environment, you will have to modify your build scripts and source code. This section discusses the migration steps, including command line examples to compile your hardware kernel with the Vitis compiler, and compile the host application with the Arm cross compiler, using files from the sysroot. The provided code examples are for educational purposes only, and should not be used for your design.