How could I compile the Noel-V with Vivado for Arty A7?

1

Hi, I am new to Noel-V. I have an Arty-A7 board, and I would like to use the Noel-V core along with some extra hardware modules built by me which I would like to connect via AXI4 to the Noel-V core.
What I have tried to do? I tried to run the source code from the Arty A7 subdirectory within the designs directory within the grlib archive, but I got a lot of errors. How? I have opened Viviado, a created a new Arty A7 project and I included those source files.
In order to get rid of those errors I decided to include a couple of VHDL sources from the lib directory within the grlib archive, like grlib or techmap, but it was in vain. I still get errors and I don’t know how could I neither simulate, nor synthesize a Noel-V core from the source code. Please help me.

2

One has to run the makefile from that subdirectory within a bash terminal in order to launch Vivado - the makefile cannot be run from the windows powershell or command prompt.

3

Hi Paul,

I am not 100% sure if you still have problems with this, so I am replying just in case this is helpful to you or someone else reading this topic.

It is possible to run the flow on Windows. Normally we recommend to use cygwin for that purpose. Please have a look at grlib.pdf, section 2.4.2 Windows with Cygwin, for instructions on how to set this up.

Regards,
Joaquin

4

Hi,

Thank you for suggestion. Indeed, it is utterly necessary a Linux subsystem. Why? Because the majority of the instructions from the Makefile are bash commands. To accomplish this, I would recommend the use of WSL (either 1 or 2, it doesn’t really matter). Cygwin is another option which takes place of a bash interpreter. However, I would strongly advocate the use of WSL since it is way much faster and closer to a real shell interpreter. In addition, if one uses WSL 2, it acts quite like a fully functional Linux virtual machine, with all its components (including NIC, systemd, etc).

5

Hi again Paul,

Thanks for your message! We have actually only used Cygwin as far as I know, since the vast majority of our work is done in a native Linux environment. However, if WSL works well, that is great feedback for any other Windows user in the future.

Regards,
Joaquin