Libero IDE presentation

Libero IDE is used to program the Microchip FPGAs.

Work environment

At HEI, we laucnch Libero IDE directly from HDL Designer. The setup bases on a set of environment variables.

Files

The main design files are located in $PATH/Board/concat:

$DESIGN.vhd
$DESIGN.pdc

The Physical Design Constraints .pdc file specifies the I/O locations and electric levels.

Further design files are found in $PATH/Board/Libero:

$DESIGN.prjx
synthesis/$DESIGN_syn.prj
designer/impl1/$DESIGN.adb
designer/impl1/$DESIGN.ide_des
designer/impl1/$DESIGN.pdb

This second set of files is copied into a temporary directory which will be additionally populated by the numerous design files generated by the deign tool.

Tasks

Launching the tools is done in two steps.

• with the top-level block selected, the prepare for synthesis task does the following:
  • the design tool generates a single VHDL file
  • the trimLibs.pl script replaces all library definitions with the one of work
• the Libero Project Navigator task does the following:
  • the Update prjx.pl script updates the paths specified in the .prjx file to reflect the project location's.
  • the Libero IDE is launched

Interactive run of the Libero tools

To check the synthesis and downnload results wit a better accuracy, one can start Libero IDE and go through:

• Synthesize -> open interactively
  • implementation option -> specify clock frequency
  • run
  • view log
• Compile -> open interactively
  • I/O Attibute Editor
  • Layout
  • Programming File
• FlashPro -> open interactively
  • verify programmer
  • verify .pdb bitstream file
  • program