Subsections


5 Hardware Database Editor (HDB Editor)

HDB Editor (hdbeditor) is a graphical frontend for creating and modifying Hardware Databases i.e. HDB files (see Section 2.2.2 for details). By default, all the example HDB files are stored in the directory hdb/ of the TCE installation directory.

1 Usage

This section is intended to familiarize the reader to basic usage of the HDB Editor.

HDB editor can be launched from command line by entering:

hdbeditor

You can also give a .hdb-file as parameter for the hdbeditor:

hdbeditor customHardware.hdb

1 Creating a new HDB file

Choose ``File'' | ``Create HDB...''. From there, type a name for your .hdb file and save it in the default HDB path (tce/hdb).

After that, you can start adding new TTA components such as function units, register files, buses and sockets from ``Edit'' | ``Add''.

2 Adding new components

A new function unit's architecture can only be added through an existing ADF file unlike register files, which can only be added by hand. The ADF files can be done in the ProDe tool. After adding a new architecture, one can add an implementation for it by right-clicking on it and choosing ``Add implementation''

The architecture implementation can be given either by hand or by a VHDL file.

After setting up the architecture, one can add new entries (function units, register files, buses, sockets) for the architectures.

3 Adding FU/RF HDL source files

HDL files of Function Unit and Register File implementations must be added in right compilation order i.e. the source file which needs to be compiled first is first in the list and so on.

Figure 4.8: HDB Editor Main window.
\begin{figure}\centerline{\psfig{figure=eps/hdbeditor/MainWindow.eps,width=0.66\textwidth}}\end{figure}

Pekka Jääskeläinen 2010-05-28