SDSoC Overview

The SDSoC™ (Software-Defined System On Chip) environment is an Eclipse-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for implementing heterogeneous embedded systems using Zynq®-7000 SoCand Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoCplatforms. The SDSoC environment provides an embedded C/C++ application development experience with an easy-to-use Eclipse IDE, and comprehensive design tools for heterogeneous Zynq-7000 SoC and Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC development to software engineers and system architects.

The SDSoC environment includes a full-system optimizing C/C++ compiler that provides automated software acceleration in programmable logic combined with automated system connectivity generation. The application programming model within the SDSoC environment should be intuitive to software engineers. An application is written as C/C++ code, with the programmer identifying a target platform and a subset of the functions within the application to be compiled into hardware. The SDSoC system compiler then compiles the application into hardware and software to realize the complete embedded system implemented on a Zynq device, including a complete boot image with firmware, operating system, and application executable.

The SDSoC environment abstracts hardware through increasing layers of software abstraction that includes cross-compilation and linking of C/C++ functions into programmable logic fabric as well as the ARM CPUs within a Zynq device. Based on a user specification of program functions to run in programmable hardware, the SDSoC environment performs program analysis, task scheduling and binding onto programmable logic and embedded CPUs, as well as hardware and software code generation that automatically orchestrates communication and cooperation among hardware and software components.

The SDSoC Environment also supports OpenCL™ applications on Xilinx provided base development platforms, with OpenCL kernels that target programmable logic in Zynq and Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC devices.