Interactions of Zynq-7000 devices with general purpose computers through PCI-express: A case study

The paper analyses interactions of all programmable systems-on-chip (Xilinx Zynq-7000 devices) with host computers through fast PCI-express bus. A case study of such interactions is presented for Xilinx ZC706 evaluation board that enables PCIe ×4 Gen2 communications. The developed driver for Linux applications in PC provides read/write functions for general-purpose programs that enable data transfers through PCI express bus in both directions. The necessary modules were designed at three different levels: 1) host PC software running under Linux; 2)Zynq-7000 software developed in Xilinx SDK from C language; 3)hardware synthesized from VHDL specifications in Xilinx Vivado suite and linked with the available intellectual property cores. All the described components were implemented and tested and the results of experiments are reported. The speed of data transfers is close to the maximum theoretically attainable speed but it takes into account all necessary protocol overheads. Potential limitations and problems are also discussed and practical applications are shown.