The following figure shows the embedded software application development workflow for the Vitis unified software platform.
Figure 1. Embedded Software Application Development Workflow
- Hardware engineers design the logic and export information required by software development from the Vivado® Design Suite to an XSA archive file.
- Software developers import XSA into the Vitis software platform by creating a platform. Platform was heavily used by application acceleration projects. To unify the Vitis workspace architecture for all kinds of applications, software development projects now migrate to platform and application architecture. A platform includes hardware specification and software environment settings.
- The software environment settings are called domains, which are also a part of a platform.
- Software developers create applications based on the platform and domains.
- Applications can be debugged in the Vitis IDE.
- In a complex system, several applications may run at the same time and communicate with each other. So the system level verification needs to be done as well.
- After everything is ready, the Vitis IDE can help to create boot images which initialize the system and launch applications.