Magazine Article

μShell Minimalist Shell for Xilinx Microprocessors

TBMG-10933

09/01/2011

Abstract
Content

μShell is a lightweight shell environment for engineers and software developers working with embedded microprocessors in Xilinx FPGAs. (μShell has also been successfully ported to run on ARM Cortex-M1 microprocessors in Actel ProASIC3 FPGAs, but without project-integration support.) μShell decreases the time spent performing initial tests of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) designs, simplifies running customizable one-time-only experiments, and provides a familiar-feeling command-line interface. The program comes with a collection of useful functions and enables the designer to add an unlimited number of custom commands, which are callable from the command-line. The commands are parameterizable (using the C-based command-line parameter idiom), so the designer can use one function to exercise hardware with different values. Also, since many hardware peripherals instantiated in FPGAs have reasonably simple register-mapped I/O interfaces, the engineer can edit and view hardware parameter settings at any time without stopping the processor.

Details
Citation
"μShell Minimalist Shell for Xilinx Microprocessors," Mobility Engineering, September 1, 2011.
Additional Details
Publisher
Published
Sep 1, 2011
Product Code
TBMG-10933
Content Type
Magazine Article
Language
English