Today, I bring you an ultra low-cost FPGA JTAG solution, where the hardware core is based on the Raspberry Pi Pico. Using related chips to create your own JTAG is very cheap; the RP2040 is priced at only 4 yuan on Taobao, making the production cost extremely low. Of course, the cost of using the Pico is also not very high, so today we will use the Pico as an example to discuss how to create JTAG and validate it.
Production Steps
First, follow the GitHub instructions (https://github.com/kholia/xvc-pico) to install dependencies on a virtual machine, then create a new repository directory and clone the pico-SDK and XVC-Pico projects.
After cloning the repository, we can build the host-side daemon. It runs on the Linux host and the RPi Pico image. We execute this according to the instructions provided in GitHub.
After building the daemon using XVC-Pico, we let it run on the development computer.
To download the image to the RPi Pico once the UF2 file is available, press and hold the bootsel button while powering on the RPi Pico; the board will mount to the file system. Just copy the UF2 file, and it will be installed and ready.
By programming the RPi Pico, we can connect the GPIO used for providing JTAG signals to the JTAG socket on the FPGA board. For other boards like GPIO, the RPi Pico operates at 3.3V, so it is essential to ensure the target board provides 3.3V to Bank 0, or there is a risk of damaging the FPGA device.
The JTAG pin assignments are as follows:
Ensure to connect the ground reference between Pico Pin 23 and the target board. Otherwise, the device cannot connect.
When the daemon is running and the board is connected and powered, we can start Vivado and try to connect to the target FPGA using the hardware manager.
When Vivado starts, open the hardware manager and create a new hardware target. Use the Xilinx Virtual Cable (XVC) option. When prompted for the XVC, use the IP address of the Linux development computer.
The next step is to use the hardware manager to read the XADC temperature and voltage.
Vitis testing is also supported:
Overall, the XVC-Pico application left a deep impression on me, and in cost-optimized development, low-cost solutions have significant advantages.
Reference Links
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https://github.com/kholia/xvc-pico
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https://www.adiuvoengineering.com/microzed-chronicles-jtag-using-a-raspberry-pi-pico
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– -THE END- –
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