I'd appreciate if someone could answer a few questions below:  If you reply 
by email, REMOVE "SPAMNOMORE" in capital letters repeated in my address 
twice (edit address manually)!!

We ordered "Xilinx Virtex-Pro II" development kit, your answers will NOT 
change buying decisions - it’s already here, we need to know:
1. Is it possible to put either Linux or Nucleus RTOS into this chip memory, 
to my knowledge your chip includes two PowerPC's and we intend to use it as 
a host?  Note we need to know if either OS can be loaded, not both, we will 
experiment with Linux and then Nucleus RTOS (Nucleus RTOS is Realtime 
Operating System from AcceleratedTechnology/MentorGraphics Corporation, for 
Xilinx FPGA's embedded design).

2. If yes, when Linux or Nucleus RTOS is loaded, will we get communications 
stack and drivers for IEEE 802.11 in ad-hoc mode (this as any EE Engineer 
knows is a wireless LAN standard)?

3. If yes, then we'll purchase a standard IEEE 802.11 card, can this card be 
plugged into your development kit port?  From what I gathered from my 
professor, he intends to plug this card into your "serial port", but seems 
strange to me.

4. Maybe you can suggest additional Xilinx products to use in our IEEE 
802.11 wireless communications project (ad-hoc mode)?

VirtexPro II development kit is already here and I was asked to research the 
above information to start design.

Thanks for your time. 

In article <YMMbd.14902$o...@newssvr31.news.prodigy.com>, Mark Levitski wrote:
> We ordered "Xilinx Virtex-Pro II" development kit, your answers will NOT 

Which development kit exactly? There are quite a bit of them:
http://www.xilinx.com/publications/matrix/devboard_color.pdf

> change buying decisions - it’s already here, we need to know:
> 1. Is it possible to put either Linux or Nucleus RTOS into this chip memory, 
> to my knowledge your chip includes two PowerPC's and we intend to use it as 

Into the _FPGA_ chip memory--no, I don't think it has enough memory
(just a few hundred of kilobytes).
But the development board likely has some memory that can be used
from the FPGA, typically 64 or 128 megabytes, and this is sufficient
for running Linux of the PowerPC.

I don't have the hardware yet (planning to get it), but I know
that there are Linux distributions that run on the FPGA, for example
TimeSys Linux which should run on Amirix development boards out of the box.

I don't know how much work would it be to port the Linux to run
on some other development kit, but in theory it is possible.

On Nucleus RTOS I know nothing of, sorry.

I was told (on this list, IIRC) that the Xilinx EDK comes with a minimal
realtime kernel that also runs on the FPGA.

Of the rest of your questions I know little about, sorry.

Tuukka Toivonen wrote:

> Which development kit exactly? There are quite a bit of them:
> http://www.xilinx.com/publications/matrix/devboard_color.pdf

It would really help to know ...
;-)

>>change buying decisions - it’s already here, we need to know:
>>1. Is it possible to put either Linux or Nucleus RTOS into this chip memory, 
>>to my knowledge your chip includes two PowerPC's and we intend to use it as 
> 
> Into the _FPGA_ chip memory--no, I don't think it has enough memory
> (just a few hundred of kilobytes).

If he got the xc2vp100, probably ...

> I don't have the hardware yet (planning to get it), but I know
> that there are Linux distributions that run on the FPGA, for example
> TimeSys Linux which should run on Amirix development boards out of the box.

The support for the VirtexIIPro is in the CVS (AFAIK), so why do you 
need a special distribution ?

> I don't know how much work would it be to port the Linux to run
> on some other development kit, but in theory it is possible.

To get Linux booting (kernel and console I/O) shouldn't be more than 
very few days. The big part is to get the drivers right for the "weird" 
devices you probably have on the board ..


cheers

In article <DsQbd.63$_d...@fe39.usenetserver.com>, E.S. wrote:
>> I don't have the hardware yet (planning to get it), but I know
>> that there are Linux distributions that run on the FPGA, for example
>> TimeSys Linux which should run on Amirix development boards out of the box.
> 
> The support for the VirtexIIPro is in the CVS (AFAIK), so why do you 
> need a special distribution ?

Which CVS? Do you mean latest Linux kernel 2.6.8.1? Grepping around the
source, I find some interesting defines in arch/ppc/boot/simple/rw4.
Can you provide any pointers for documentation about running standard
Linux on Virtex-II Pros?

> To get Linux booting (kernel and console I/O) shouldn't be more than 
> very few days. The big part is to get the drivers right for the "weird" 
> devices you probably have on the board ..

Very interesting.

> 1. Is it possible to put either Linux or Nucleus RTOS into this chip memory, 
Yes and yes by using the on-board DDR memory. The ML310 board actually 
ships with a pretty extensive demo for Linux. The web page for ML310 at 
http://www.xilinx.com/ml310 has a documentation section that describes 
in much detail on how to build Linux systems for the board. Further, 
XAPP765 is a document to get you started with EDK and MontaVista Linux 
(http://direct.xilinx.com/bvdocs/appnotes/xapp765.pdf)

A (very) minimal Linux kernel takes around 600KB. So, you might be able 
to run it out of BRAM on larger chips. However, in most cases it is not 
the Linux kernel that takes most space but the application that you run 
on top of it.

Nucleus is known to run on Virtex-II Pro. For more information please 
contact Mentor.


>
> 2. If yes, when Linux or Nucleus RTOS is loaded, will we get communications 
> stack and drivers for IEEE 802.11 in ad-hoc mode (this as any EE Engineer 
> knows is a wireless LAN standard)?

While we have not tested the ML310 with a wireless card the Linux kernel 
supports these cards and we have done tests with PCMCIA cards from Cisco 
on the ML300 board.
So, chances are high that a 802.11 PCI card will work out of the box.

>
> 3. If yes, then we'll purchase a standard IEEE 802.11 card, can this card be 
> plugged into your development kit port?
Yes, into one of the four PCI slots (2x 3.3V, 2x 5V).

- Peter

Quick message for those asking part numbers (if you didnt ask - IGNORE, 
thanks for answers):

XILINX VirtexProII-based ML300 and ML310 boards (we have both), part# as 
follows:
a) UW-V2P-ML310 - US version, embedded/development platform?  It may be 'HW" 
in front of this part# and not "UW"
and
b) DO-V2P-ML300 - US version, evaluation/development kit (EDK 6.2I)


*****Your original message********
It would help, if you would tell us, which board you got ...