Application Note: The Design, Inter-processor Communication and Synchronization of a MicroBlaze Multicore SoC

Prepared by Reza Ameli and Carl Poirier, graduate students, Université Laval; in co-operation with CMC Microsystems.

This application note describes the process for creating a dual-processor FPGA-based System-on-Chip (SoC) using two MicroBlaze processors in a Virtex 6 FPGA on the ML605 evaluation kit.

Upon finishing this process, the user can create a system with multiple MicroBlaze processors, synchronize their accesses to shared resources, and allow them to communicate with each other using the Mailbox IP core.

Using Xilinx EDK version 14.6, user completes various parts of a project that eventually becomes a complete dual-core system. This application note contains both graphical illustrations and comments on some subtle settings of the Xilinx EDK toolset.