linuxppc-2.4.30-pre1 crashes with root fs on Xilinx SystemACE

[Keith J Outwater]

Peter - 
That's about the throughput I saw on my system.  It's pretty slow!

Tony - 
I did get things working by applying a "sysace nointr" patch that had been 
posted to the list some
time ago in response to comments that SystemACE interrupts were not 
working as expected on
Memec boards.  I did my initial development on a Memec board and had lots 
of problems until
I disabled SystemACE interrupts.  Some day I may actually go back and try 
to figure out
what is going on, but for the time being, I can live with what I have.


Peter Ryser <peter.ryser at xilinx.com> wrote on 09/28/2005 02:32:11 AM:

> Some time ago we did some tests with bonnie++ on Linux running on 
> the PPC405 in a Virtex-II Pro FPGA. You can expect the following 
performance:
> Read peak: 629 KB/s
> Write peak: 299 KB/s
> Not considering network overhead, a 10MB file should take less than 
> a minute to update.
> 
> - Peter
> 
> 
> Tony Lee wrote:
> Keith, 
> 
> Some suggestions, before you verify your hw board/FPGA works fine 
> with SYSACE, 
>     * don't use sysace as root fs.
>     * use a ram fs as root fs. 
>     * Next, load sysace driver a loadable driver module.  It works, 
> I tried it.
>     * check mount read only and see if it works.
>     * Next, mount it writable.
> 
> We have some issues with sysace driver initially, everything works 
> out fine later.
> There were small errors in our HW layout.
> 
> I had to hack the sysace driver left and right to id the problem.  But 
at the 
> end, after I fixed the layout problem from the fpga's ucf file, the 
> original driver
> run perfectly without any modification.
> 
> In my experiences, the ppc linux distribution and its linux sysace 
> driver are good
> if everything is setup correctly.
> 
> One minor issues:  The sysace driver's write performance sucks.  I 
> have to explain
> to others why the upgrade 10 MBytes files with usb flash writer takes 
tens of 
> seconds.  When we do it from linux (nfs or ftp), it tooks minutes to 
sync.
> 
> Peter, maybe you can push the xilinx a bit on sysace write performance? 
:-)
> 
> -Tony

> On 8/29/05, Peter Ryser <peter.ryser at xilinx.com> wrote: 
> Hi Keith,
> 
> I sent you a private email but for other interested people:
> Downloading the latest linuxppc-2.4 kernel I could boot from and access
> System ACE CF without problems on a ML403 (Virtex-4, 4VFX12) and a ML310 

> (Virtex-II Pro, 2VP30) using EDK 7.1.2. In both cases I started with
> config_xilinx_ml300.
> 
> - Peter
> 
> 
> 
> Keith J Outwater wrote:
> 
> >Hello -
> >Per a previous suggestion from this list, I rsynced the linuxppc-2.4
> >kernel sources from MontaVista and modified the kernel to run on my 
custom
> >ppc405/VirtexII Pro based system with U-Boot as the bootloader.
> >When I try to use the SystemACE device as the root filesystem, the 
kernel 
> >crashes with a sig 11.  Looking at the 'oops' output it appears  the
> >SystemACE driver may be to blame.  The crash is random - sometimes I 
get
> >all the way to login as root and then things crash on a file copy or a 
> >file read.
> >Before I start digging deeper, is anyone running a VirtexIIPro based
> >system with the root filesystem in the CF card attached to a SystemACE?
> >I'm wondering if I really have the best kernel and SystemACE driver. 
> >BTW, I'm developing the hardware design using Xilinx EDK 7.02i.
> >Thanks,
> >Keith
> >_______________________________________________
> >Linuxppc-embedded mailing list
> > Linuxppc-embedded at ozlabs.org
> >https://ozlabs.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxppc-embedded
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> -Tony
> Having fun with FPGA HW + ppc + Linux