The embedded software development flow is designed to be used for the development of embedded software applications targeted to run on embedded processors. The Vitis Unified IDEworks with hardware designs created with AMD Vivado™ Design Suite. The following figure shows the embedded software application development workflow for the Vitis tools.
Figure 1. Embedded Software Application Development Workflow
- Hardware engineers design the logic and export information required by software development from the AMD Vivado™ Design Suite to an XSA archive file.
- Software developers import the XSA into the Vitis tools by creating a platform. To unify the Vitis software platform 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 can run at the same time and communicate with each other. Thus, system-level verification should be done as well.
- After everything is ready, the Vitis IDE can help to create boot images which initialize the system and launch applications.