What is SDCC used for? I just want to sure that I understand this correctly. I
think it's used to compile the firmware that runs on the Xilinx MicroBlaze CPU
on the FPGA inside the USRP, USRP2, and USRP N200/N210. (all USRPs have FPGAs
inside with Xilinx MicroBlaze CPUs on them) Normally, you don't need to do
this. Users download the latest binary firmware image from the Ettus website
and burn it to the SD memory card (USRP2) or flash memory (USRP N200/N210) and
run it. You'd only really need SDCC if you want to modify the firmware and run
a customized version of it.
Could you please correct me where I'm wrong/inaccurate?
Thanks.
You only need SDCC (or the equivalent ZPU version of GCC for USRP2/N2xx
under UHD) if you want to compile custom firmware.
SDCC is used *only* for the USRP1, which uses an 8051-variant called an
FX2, which has a built-in hardware USB implementation that
"goes real fast".
Normally, you simply use the pre-compiled firmware and FPGA images that
you get from Ettus' website.
In the early days I think Matt didn't bother distributing the firmware
images, since you could always compile them from the source code
that came with Gnu Radio, using the SDCC 2.X compiler. With the
advent of binary-only packages for Gnu Radio, there had to be
a mechanism for the firmware images to be made available to you.
So, the firmware and fpga images are now always available from the Ettus
website. The matching source-code is part of a standard
UHD "git" checkout--but again, you can only rebuild them yourself if
you have the correct toolchains. So the overwhelming majority
of users just use the pre-built images. Users who want to do their
own custom firmware and FPGA will need to acquire the appropriate
toolchain, and compile.
My "build-gnuradio" script downloads the latest matching firmware
images, and installs them in the "right place"
(/usr/local/share/uhd/images),
along with fetching/building the latest UHD and GnuRadio.
--
Marcus Leech
Principal Investigator
Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
http://www.sbrac.org
_______________________________________________
Discuss-gnuradio mailing list
Discuss-gnuradio@gnu.org
https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnuradio
