Setting Up the Custom Board - 1.4.1 English

Vitis AI User Guide (UG1414)

Document ID
UG1414
Release Date
2021-12-13
Version
1.4.1 English

Vitis AI supports the official ZCU102/ZCU104 as well as user-defined boards.

If you want to run Vitis AI on your custom board, follow these steps. Ensure that you complete a step before proceeding to the next step.

  1. Create the platform system of your custom board. For more information, see Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation: Embedded Software Development (UG1400) and https://github.com/Xilinx/Vitis_Embedded_Platform_Source/tree/master/Xilinx_Official_Platforms.
  2. Integrate the DPU IP. See https://github.com/Xilinx/Vitis-AI/tree/master/dsa/DPU-TRD for more information.
    Note: After this step is completed, an sd_card directory and an sd_card.img image with DPU are created. For known issues, see Known issues.
  3. Install the dependent libraries of Vitis AI.

    There are two ways to install the dependent libraries of Vitis AI. One is to rebuild the system by configuring PetaLinux and the other is to install the Vitis AI-dependent libraries online.

    1. To rebuild the system by configuring PetaLinux:
      To obtain the recipes of VAI1.4 and rebuild the system, refer to the PetaLinux Tools Documentation: Reference Guide (UG1144).
      Note: If you want to compile the example on the target, select the packagegroup-petalinux-vitisai-dev and packagegroup-petalinux-self-hosted and recompile the system. (The name of the packagegroup-petalinux-vitisai-dev option may change in future PetaLinux releases).
    2. To install the Vitis AI-dependent libraries online, execute dnf install packagegroup-petalinux-vitisai to complete the installation, as shown in the following code:
      root@xilinx-zcu104-2020_1:/media/sd-mmcblk0p1# dnf install packagegroup-petalinux-vitisai
      Last metadata expiration check: 1 day, 18:12:25 ago on Wed Jun 17 09:35:01 2020.
      Package packagegroup-petalinux-vitisai-1.0-r0.noarch is already installed.
      Dependencies resolved.
      Nothing to do.
      Complete!
      Note: If you use this method, ensure that the board is connected to the Internet.

      For the latest installation commands, see https://github.com/Xilinx/Vitis-AI/tree/master/setup/mpsoc/VART#step2-setup-the-target.

    This installs the latest version of VART on the system. The system image for Vitis AI is available.

  4. Flash the image to the SD card.

    See Flashing the OS Image to the SD Card to flash the new image to the SD card.

  5. Update the Vitis AI Runtime libraries to VAI1.4, if needed. To upgrade to Vitis AI 1.4, update the following library packages.
    • libunilog
    • libxir
    • libtarget-factory
    • libvart
    • libvitis_ai_library

    See Installing Vitis AI Runtime on the Evaluation Board to install the Vitis AI Runtime libraries.

    After you install the Vitis AI Runtime, a vart.conf file is generated in the /etc directory. This contains the location of the dpu.xclbin file, as shown below. The Vitis AI examples fetch the dpu.xclbin file by reading the vart.conf file. If the dpu.xclbin file on your board is not in the same location as the default, change the dpu.xclbin path in the vart.conf file.
    root@xilinx-zcu102-2021_1:~# cat /etc/vart.conf
    firmware: /media/sd-mmcblk0p1/dpu.xclbin
    
    Note: This step generates a system that can run the Vitis AI examples.
  6. Run the Vitis AI examples. See Running Examples to run the Vitis AI examples.