Automated Gateware Discovery Using Open Firmware A presentation

Automated Gateware Discovery Using Open Firmware A presentation on my part time MSc research that aims to lay foundation for automating gateware detection. Presented By: Shanly Rajan Embedded Systems Engineer SKA SA CASPER WORKSHOP: 20 AUGUST 2010

Overview Background - OS for FPGAS Open Firmware U-boot Open Firmware design & implementation Implementation Examples Research Status & Future Directions Conclusion

Recent OS for FPGAs Unified HW/SW OS for PRFPGA systems 2009 2008 OS for Reconfigurable Embedded Platforms 2004 Research Issues in OS for reconfigurable computing 2006 v. BORPH OS v. GATOS v. FOCA 2002 1994 Virtual Hardware Operating System for Xilinx XC 6002 OF v. VPOS v. Recon. OS v. FDT for Free. BSD v. FDT for ROACH

Open Firmware : Hardware Independent Boot Code Boot Time Drivers for testing machine hardware Building Device Trees which OS later uses Device Tree : Data Structure that holds information about the set of devices attached to the system, including permanently installed devices and plug-in devices, as described by an Open Firmware. A FDT: • Data structure for describing hardware • Passed to kernel at boot-time • Alternative to hard-coded platform details

U-boot Open Firmware U-boot, the bootloader for the powerpc architecture in ROACH has built-in Open Firmware (OF) support The device-tree layout for u-boot is strongly inherited from the definition of the Open Firmware IEEE 1275 -1994 device-tree The observation that gateware implementations on FPGA can be treated as pluggable peripherals suggests that it can be represented in the device tree just like any other physical peripheral Conventional/Traditional Method : Scheme of loading existing device drivers to operate on physical peripherals can also be extended to gateware images as well. The research facilitates the process of identifying and operating on gateware images by extending the exisiting infrastructure of probing devices in traditional software by using Open Firmware.

Terminology • Open Firmware (OF) Device Tree (DT) – Device representation exported by Open Firmware • Flattened Device Tree (FDT) – Firmware-independent device tree • Device Tree Compiler (DTC) – Convert between. dts and. dtb • Device Tree Source (. dts) • Device Tree Blob (. dtb) – Tokenized form; used by kernel • Binding – Documentation of how the DT describes hardware

OF Device Tree Model root platform spi bridge Drivers registered against bus types uart i 2 c bus temp platform_bus_type pci bus ethernet i 2 c_bus_type pci_bus_type

Open Firmware Implementation Gateware Implementations Uboot OF Bootloader root { ………………. . Ethernet Serial Data Capture. . . . ……………… } Ethernet Data Capture Serial Bit stream + Meta-information file dts Linux OF DEVICE DRIVER Serial UART driver Ethernet driver Sound driver OF Client Interface Calls DEVICE TREE EXTENSION dtb

Serial UART example SERIAL DEVICE DRIVER Uartlite Serial bit OPERATES Uartlite Driver FPGA DESCRIPTION FPGAV 5 : serial@d 0010000{ device_type = "serial"; compatible = "xlnx, opb-uartlite-1. 00. b"; reg = <0 xd 0010000>; current-speed = <115200>; clock-frequency = <6666>; xlnx, data-bits = <8>; xlnx, odd-parity = <0>; xlnx, use-parity = <0>; }; EXTENDING DEVICE TREES INVOKES MATCH

Treating kat. ADC as a soundcard • Current Status Aiming to record and playback ADC data captured into BRAMS with a modified sound device driver and utilize sound analysis tools for visualization and playback. • Future Work – A mkfdt utility that converts FPGA bit stream and meta information into the required flattened device tree format. – Hot Pluggability – Adding device drivers specific to radio astronomy.

BORPH or OF FDT ? ? Trade - Off Ease of Use Performance Win-Win Approach

Conclusion Recent OS for FPGAS - Background Open Firmware U-boot Open Firmware OF design and implementation for ROACH OF implementation examples: serial UART Current progress & Future Directions ALTERNATIVE APPROACH CONSIDERED (EXTENDING DEVICE TREES)

Questions • q email : shanly. rajan@ska. ac. za