Base System Builder

The Xilinx Base System Builder (BSB) tool is used to create basic system-on-chip designs for a variety of different development boards. This tool is capable of creating fully functional system-on-chip designs which can include microprocessors, memorys, buses, interrupt controllers, and a variety of different peripherals. All of this is done using a simple GUI wizard and can be completed in as short as a few minutes. The basic steps involved are outlined below.

Start a New Project

If the new project dialog is not showing then select New Project from the File menu. At this point the new project dialog should be showing.  Selecting Base System Builder wizard and then clicking on OK will open up the BSB tool and allow you to create your system-on-chip design. The first thing that you will be asked is where you want your project to be created. Either entry a folder name here or browse to a folder using the browse button. Once you click on OK the main BSB window will appear. The main BSB window can take a while to load sometimes so be patient.

Creating a Design

Once the main window has appeared, you will be asked if you want to create a new design or if you would like to load a previously created design. Normally you will want to create a new design, but it you have an old design that you would like to modify then you can select it here. Either way click on the next button to continue.

One the next screen you will select the development board that you want to create a design for. You can also create a base system for a custom board but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial. For now, select the development board that you will be using. For instance, select Xilinx as the board vendor, XUP Virtex-II Pro Development System as the board name, and C as the board revision. After you have selected your development board, select next to continue.

Selecting a Microprocessor

You will now select the microprocessor that you would like to include in your design. The BSB tool only allows you to create system-on-chip designs with one microprocessor. However, you can add additional microprocessors to the design once you have finished with the BSB tool. Some boards only support the MicroBlaze processor while others support both the MicroBlaze and the PowerPC. Select the microprocessor you would like to use in your design and click on next to continue.

At this point you will setting up the parameters for the microprocessor you selected. You will need to select the processor frequency, debugging interfaces, cache setup, floating point support, and local memories. Each processor has slightly different options and you will need to determine what the correct settings are in your design. For a MicroBlaze design be sure to include enough local memory for your application. We recommend using the maximum value unless you need extra BRAMS for other soft-IP peripherals.

Setting up Peripherals

Once you have finised setting up your microprocessor you will be presented with a series of windows which allow you to add peripherals to your basic system-on-chip design. Each board has a different set of peripherals and each peripheral has a different set of options. Progress through the windows and select the peripherals and options that you need in your design. At the end you will come to the software setup window described in the next section.

For a first time BSB user we recommend setting up a system-on-chip design which contains the following:

1. MicroBlaze soft-processor with 64KB of data and instruction memory
2. OPB UART Lite peripheral using a baud rate of 9600, 8 data bits, no parity, and no interrupts.
3. GPIOs for any LEDs, push buttons, or DIP switches on your development board with not interrupts

This will allow you to get a very basic system-on-chip up and running. After you have gotten your first design working, you can go back to the BSB tool and create a new, more featureful design.

Setting up the Software

At this point you will need to configure the software settings. Normally, the defaults selected by the tool are OK. If you have an atypical setup then you can use the software setup screen to configure the default standard input and standard output peripheral and setup your boot memories. You will need to ensure that you setup your boot memory correctly or your system-on-chip design may not work correctly.

At this point you can also select any default software applications that you would like to create. You can have the BSB wizard create a memory test for you and a peripheral test. We recommend having the system build both tests for all of your systems. This way, after you finish with the BSB tool, you can quickly create a bitstream from your design and test that it works.

If you do elect to have the BSB tool create some default software applications for you, you will need to setup the instruction, data, stack, and heap memories that that application will use. Normally the defaults provided will work the best.

Finishing Up

Once you have finished configuring the software you will be presented with the system overview window. This shows all of the microprocessors, peripherals, and software applications that the BSB tool is going to create for you. Additionally, the BSB tool will setup a default memory map for your system which is shown as well. Clicking on the Generate button will create your system-on-chip design.

Once the design has been generated you will be asked if you want to save a BSB configuration file. This file contains all of the settings that you selected and can be used to regenerate the system later. We recommend leaving the save settings file option selected and then clicking finish. At this point your BSB generated system-on-chip design has been created and you can start using XPS to edit your design.