By Adam Taylor

Well I must admit that this is one blog post I never expected to write. When I started writing the MicroZed Chronicles, I was never sure I would be writing the 52nd weekly instalment. Having achieved this milestone and more than 150,000 views along the way, I would like to look back over the year and review what I have covered on the Zynq SoC. I’ll then outline a few of my plans for the future.

The first six posts looked at the basics of the Zynq software environment we would be using. We developed software to run a simple “hello world” program and we had this program boot from our non-volatile memory of choice.

Having covered the basics of getting programs up and running on the Zynq, we then introduced I/O basics on Zynq PS (Processor Side)—parts 7 to 13—introducing the XADC and looking at the Zynq SoC’s MIO (Multiplexed I/O) block and the GIC (Generic Interrupt Controller), which then allowed us to use interrupts in our designs going forward. This short blog sequence includes the most read of all the MicroZed Chronicles posts with more than 16000 views.

Becoming familiar with Zynq SoC interrupts allowed us to look at the private timers—in blogs 14 to 20—and the watchdog timers and TTCs (Triple Timer Counters) available to the PS side of the device. We also looked at using these timers in applications.

By the time we finished looking at the Zynq TTC, we had completed our examination of the PS side of the Zynq SoC. It was time to introduce the Zynq PL (Programmable Logic) and the communication mechanisms between the Zynq PS and the PL. Between blogs 21 and 29, we explored the interface between the Zynq PL/PS, how to create our own peripherals in the Zynq PL, and how to communicate with these peripherals from the Zynq PS. These blogs also explored the overhead associated with using the PL for processing and as such introduced the concept of DMA to transfer blocks of data effectively between the PL and the two on-chip ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processors and the peripherals within the PS side of the Zynq SoC.

The next eight blogs—30 to 37—looked in depth at how we could use what we had learned to date to create a system that’s capable of driving an Adafruit NeoPixel LED string or array under command of a remote host PC. These blogs also introduced the MicroZed I/O Carrier card and its PMOD interfaces.

Up until this point, all of the software had been bare-metal—without an operating system. However the next blog tranche looked at the basic concepts of operating systems and then introduced the Micrium µC/OS-III and FreeRTOS operating systems.

As we had until recently not been using an operating system, we had also been using just one of the two ARM Cortex-A9 processors within the Zynq. The most recent MicroZed Chronicles blogs have focused on using both of the ARM Cortex-A9 processors within the Zynq PS in an Asymmetric MultiProcessing (AMP) manner. We looked at the how we do this with the toolset and how we can communicate between processors and generate interrupts from one processor to the other.

Over the next year we will be putting Linux on the Zynq and looking at how we can profile and debug software. We’ll also look at more advanced AXI interfaces that we can use to communicate between the Zynq PL and PS. Those are a few of the topics I plan to cover in my next 52 blog posts.

However to celebrate the first 52 posts, I have collated the 51 previous instalments into a PDF download called the MicroZed chronicles, which you can download by clicking here.

Thanks for reading over this past year!

Please see the previous entries in this MicroZed series by Adam Taylor:

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 51: Interrupts and AMP

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 50: AMP and the Zynq SoC’s OCM (On-Chip Memory)

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 49: Using the Zynq SoC’s On-Chip Memory for AMP Communications

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 48: Bare-Metal AMP (Asymmetric Multiprocessing)

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 47: AMP—Asymmetric Multiprocessing on the Zynq SoC

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 46: Using both of the Zynq SoC’s ARM Cortex-A9 Cores

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 44: MicroZed Operating Systems—FreeRTOS

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 43: XADC Alarms and Interrupts

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 42: MicroZed Operating Systems Part 4

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 41: MicroZed Operating Systems Part 3

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 40: MicroZed Operating Systems Part Two

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 39: MicroZed Operating Systems Part One

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 38 – Answering a question on Interrupts

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 37: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with MicroZed Part 8

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 36: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with MicroZed Part 7

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 35: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with MicroZed Part 6

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 34: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with MicroZed Part 5

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 33: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with the Zynq SoC

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 32: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 31: Systems of Modules, Driving RGB NeoPixel LED arrays

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 30: The MicroZed I/O Carrier Card

Zynq DMA Part Two – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 29

The Zynq PS/PL, Part Eight: Zynq DMA – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 28

The Zynq PS/PL, Part Seven: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 27

The Zynq PS/PL, Part Six: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 26

The Zynq PS/PL, Part Five: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 25

The Zynq PS/PL, Part Four: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 24

The Zynq PS/PL, Part Three: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 23

The Zynq PS/PL, Part Two: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 22

The Zynq PS/PL, Part One: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 21

Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Four: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 20

Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Three: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 19

Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Two: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 18

Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part One: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 17

The Zynq SoC’s Private Watchdog: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 16

Implementing the Zynq SoC’s Private Timer: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 15

MicroZed Timers, Clocks and Watchdogs: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 14

More About MicroZed Interrupts: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 13

MicroZed Interrupts: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 12

Using the MicroZed Button for Input: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 11

Driving the Zynq SoC's GPIO: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 10

Meet the Zynq MIO: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 9

MicroZed XADC Software: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 8

Getting the XADC Running on the MicroZed: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 7

A Boot Loader for MicroZed. Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 6

Figuring out the MicroZed Boot Loader – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 5

Running your programs on the MicroZed – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 4

Zynq and MicroZed say “Hello World”-- Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 3

Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles: Setting the SW Scene

Bringing up the Avnet MicroZed with Vivado