Platform Basics

A platform is a starting point of your design, upon which you build Vitis™ applications.

For Xilinx® demo boards, you can access pre-built base platforms on the Xilinx download center: https://www.xilinx.com/support/download.html. The source code of these base platforms is available via the Xilinx GitHub site: https://github.com/Xilinx/Vitis_Embedded_Platform_Source.

Alternatively, you can create your custom Vitis embedded platforms from scratch. To do this, you must first bring up your custom boards. Custom board bring-up and Vitis platform creation are different jobs that require different skillsets. This guide focuses on the platform creation process and assumes you have a brought-up board with the following base components:

  • A base hardware design exported from Vivado® Design Suite
  • A base software design that includes Linux kernel, root file system, and device tree

Once you have working hardware and board through a Vivado design, converting it into a Vitis platform requires adding properties to the base components to meet the requirements of Vitis. In general, platform creation consists of the following steps:

  1. Add hardware interface parameters and interrupt support in your Vivado project and export the XSA.
  2. Update the software platform components to enable application acceleration software stacks (enable XRT, update device tree, and so on).
  3. Package and generate the platform using XSCT commands or the Vitis GUI.
TIP: For information about XSCT commands, refer to Xilinx Software Command-Line Tool.

The properties and software stacks added above are used by Vitis to recognize the resources in platforms and take control of them.

Note: Performing these steps in order—starting with the Vivado design and then adding PetaLinux base components—simplifies debugging if any issues occur during the platform creation process.