Intel® Simics® Simulator for Intel® FPGAs: Agilex™ 5 Virtual Platform User Guide

ID 786901
Date 11/16/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.1.3.2. Basic Ethernet

The Agilex™ 5 Universal Virtual Platform provides basic Ethernet functionality through a network-simulated environment supported by the Intel® Simics® Service Node component (referred to as service_node_cmp0).

This component provides the following services:
  • A TFTP server service to transfer files from the host PC to the target system.
  • A DHCP server to dynamically assign an IP address to the target system

The Intel® Simics® Service Node component also acts as a router in the simulated environment, and this router is configured with a 10.10.0.1 IP address. The DHCP service is configured to assign an IP address in the following range: 10.10.0.100–10.10.0.199. The Service Node is also configured to provide Network Address Port Translation (NAPT) for outgoing traffic to allow the interaction between the target system and the host PC and enable the TFTP (from U-Boot and Linux), SCP, and SSH services.

In the target system, the Ethernet functionality is provided using the XGMAC/TSN devices in the HPS, enabling an eth0 Ethernet link. This link connects with an Ethernet switch instantiated in the target script. Only the TSN0 instance is connected to this switch using the Marvell Ethernet PHY instantiated at the board level.

Basic Ethernet support in the virtual platform allows the target software to set a MAC address locally for communication over the network. This local MAC address supports all key transport layers of a protocol such as TCP, UDP, and ICMP. Basic Ethernet allows communication over IPv4 and IPv6 protocols and supports different hardware offloading features.

The virtual platform supports L2, L3, and L4 filtering and can show network statistics.

The create_hps_eth0_network user-configuration parameter from the target script enables the setup of the network support in the virtual platform.