Intel® SoC FPGA Embedded Development Suite (SoC EDS) User Guide

ID 683187
Date 3/12/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents

7. Hardware Library

The Intel SoC FPGA Hardware Library (HWLIB) was created to address the needs of low-level software programmers who require full access to the configuration and control facilities of SoC FPGA hardware. An additional purpose of the HWLIB is to mitigate the complexities of managing the operation of a sophisticated, multi-core application processor and its integration with hardened IP peripheral blocks and programmable logic in a SoC architecture.

Figure 27. Hardware Library

Within the context of the SoC hardware and software ecosystem, the HWLIB is capable of supporting software development in conjunction with full featured operating systems or standalone BareMetal programming environments. The relationship of the HWLIB within a complete SoC HW/SW environment is illustrated in the above figure.

The HWLIB provides a symbolic register abstraction layer known as the SoC Abstraction Layer (SoCAL) that enables direct access and control of HPS device registers within the address space. This layer is necessary for enabling several key stakeholders (boot loader developers, driver developers, BSP developers, debug agent developers, and board bring-up engineers) requiring a precise degree of access and control of the hardware resources.

The HWLIB also deploys a set of Hardware Manager (HW Manager) APIs that provides more complex functionality and drivers for higher level use case scenarios.

The HWLIB has been developed as a source code distribution. The intent of this model is to provide a useful set of out-of-the-box functionality and to serve as a source code reference implementation that a user can tailor accordingly to meet their target system requirements.

The capabilities of the HWLIB are expected to evolve and expand over time particularly as common use case patterns become apparent from practical application in actual systems.

In general, the HWLIB assumes to be part of the system software that is executing on the Hard Processor System (HPS) in privileged supervisor mode and in the secure state.

The anticipated HWLIB clients include:

  • BareMetal application developers
  • Custom preloader and boot loader software developers
  • BSP developers
  • Diagnostic tool developers
  • Software driver developers
  • Debug agent developers
  • Board bring-up engineers
  • Other developers requiring full access to SoC FPGA hardware capabilities