create_hw_probe - 2020.2 English

Vivado Design Suite Tcl Command Reference Guide (UG835)
Document ID
UG835
Release Date
2020-11-18
Version
2020.2 English

Create hardware probe object

Syntax

create_hw_probe [‑no_gui_update] [‑map <arg>] [‑quiet] [‑verbose] <name>
    <core>

Returns

New hardware probe object.

Usage

Name Description
[-no_gui_update] Defer GUI update.
[-map] Declaration of bits. Default: 0
[-quiet] Ignore command errors
[-verbose] Suspend message limits during command execution
<name> Name of new object. Bus probes have range appended.
<core> Associated hardware ILA core object.

Categories

Hardware

Description

This command creates a new user-defined probe on the specified ILA core to define triggers and view data in the Vivado Logic Analyzer. The new probe can combine specific bit values of existing probes to simplify or clarify the data presented in the waveform viewer. Captured data samples from the user-defined probe can be reported with the list_hw_samples command.

User-defined probes can map bit values from a single physical probe on the ILA core, or can combine bit values from multiple physical probes onto a single user-defined probe. Probes that map bits from a single probe can be used to create triggers and view data. Probes that combine bits from multiple physical probes can only be used for viewing data in the Vivado Logic Analyzer.

You can delete user-defined probes with the delete_hw_probe command.

The create_hw_probe command returns the user-defined probe name when successful, or returns an error if it fails.

Arguments

-no_gui_update - (Optional) Do not update the GUI in the Vivado logic analyzer to reflect the addition of the user-defined probe.

-map <arg> - (Optional) Specifies the physical probe port name and signal bits to map into the new user-defined probe. Physical probe ports are the ports on the specified hw_ila object, and are related to signals being probed by the ILA core. The -map argument is specified as a list of physical probe port names and bits: 
-map {0011 probe3[19] probe3[6]}
Tip: The map can also include constant values as indicated above.
-quiet - (Optional) Execute the command quietly, returning no messages from the command. The command also returns TCL_OK regardless of any errors encountered during execution.
Note: Any errors encountered on the command-line, while launching the command, will be returned. Only errors occurring inside the command will be trapped.
-verbose - (Optional) Temporarily override any message limits and return all messages from this command.
Note: Message limits can be defined with the set_msg_config command.
<name> - Specifies the name to assign to the user-defined probe, as a combination of name and probe width, probeName[0:3] for instance. If no width is specified, the default probe width is one bit.
Note: The user-defined probe width must match the number of bits specified in the -map argument.

<core> - Specifies the ILA core object. The hw_ila can be specified by name or as an object returned by the get_hw_ilas command.

Examples

The following example maps bits from multiple physical probes onto a new user-defined probe on the specified ILA core: 
create_hw_probe -map {0011 probe5[3:0] probe8 probe9} myProbeAR[9:0] hw_ila_1
Tip: The -map option combines 10 bits onto the new probe, so the probe name specifies a matching port width.
The following example creates a hw_probe with copies of the most-significant bit to sign-extend a 30-bit signal to align it with other 32-bit signed signals: 
create_hw_probe -map {probe0[29] probe0[29] probe0[29:0]} \  
mySignExtendedProbe[31:0] [get_hw_ilas hw_ila_1]

See Also