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

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

2. Agilex™ 5 Intel® Simics® Virtual Platforms

The Intel® Simics® model of the Agilex™ 5 FPGA SoC hard processor system (HPS) implements the simulated functionality of the HPS. This model is instantiated as part of a virtual platform along with other components.

The embedded software runs in the simulated processors of Agilex™ 5 HPS device Intel® Simics® model interacting with the simulation of other internal and external device components. The virtual platforms combine the HPS Intel® Simics® model with other component models to provide a full system simulation.

For more information about the difference between a virtual platform and a model in Intel® Simics® simulation, refer to Device Model and Virtual Platforms in the Intel® Simics® Simulator for Intel® FPGAs User Guide.

The Agilex™ 5 Intel® Simics® virtual platform follows the Intel® Simics® Simulator for Intel® FPGAs virtual platform philosophy in which it attempts to match the architecture defined in the Quartus® Prime GHRD for this device for use in real hardware. The Golden Hardware Reference Design (GHRD), part of the Golden System Reference Design (GSRD), is a Quartus® Prime project that contains a full HPS design for the Agilex™ 5 SoC Development Kit. The GHRD has connections to a boot source, SDRAM memory, and other peripherals on the development board. The purpose of the hardware design is to configure the SoC, including the FPGA portion, the HPS pin multiplexers and I/Os, and the DDRAM. All software projects depend on a hardware design.

The Intel Agilex 5 universal virtual platform provides a virtual GHRD that allows exercising the HPS software in an Intel® Simics® simulation. For this purpose, the virtual platform consists of the following key components:

Table 3.   Agilex™ 5 Intel® Simics® Virtual Platform Components
Component Description
HPS An Agilex™ 5 SoC FPGA HPS model (the HPS IP), including all the subsystems that integrates this.
HPS Subsystem Corresponds to the subsystem model that includes the HPS IP model of the Agilex™ 5 device and some of the top-level components that interact with it, such as the SDM and memory controller (EMIF).
FPGA Fabric Design Corresponds to the logic model that is implemented in the FPGA fabric. This is not implemented as a single component instead, each one of the modules included in this model is instantiated individually.
qsys_top Corresponds to the hardware design view that is being modeled, and corresponds to the qsys_top component seen from the Platform Designer under the GHRD (soc_inst instance). Under qsys_top, components such as the HPS subsystem and the FPGA Fabric design are instantiated.
FPGA A model that represents the top-level view of the hardware design from the FPGA device perspective corresponding to the GHRD in the Quartus® Prime project for the Agilex™ 5 device. This model instantiates qsys_top component.
Board A board model containing an Agilex™ 5 SoC FPGA device. This model integrates the FPGA model with board components such as flash devices (SD Card, QSPI, NAND), USB disks, Ethernet PHY, and connectors.
System A model that represents the complete system. It instantiates the board component and any other component not included as part of the board component.
Target Script The target script instantiates the system component in an Intel® Simics® simulation environment. This script defines any user-configurable parameters, the network configuration, and any run-time commands to use during the simulation.

For more information about the virtual platform structure defined for Intel® FPGA devices, refer to Understanding Target Scripts in the Intel® Simics® Simulator for Intel® FPGAs User Guide.

The Agilex™ 5 Virtual Platforms support Intel® Simics® simulations with the Agilex™ 5 HPS device model. The following sections describe the supported virtual platforms in detail.