12-29-2020: Initial Setup of the PolarFire SOC Icicle Kit

Introduction

I picked up the PolarFire SOC Icicle Kit during the crowd funding phase on Crowd Supply I’ve been playing around with the hardware off and on since I got it,

Useful Links:

MicroChip Docs:

• MicroChip: PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit Quick Start Guide

• GitHub: Icicle Kit Software Developer Guide

• GitHub: Updating PolarFire SOC Icicle-Kit FPGA Design and Linux Image

seL4 Port:

• seL4 on the PolarFire SOC

• seL4 Test on the PolarFire SOC

Forums:

• RISC-V Exchange

Script for terminal attach

After attaching with minicom manually a few times, I eventually found the script below, it comes from the seL4 Test o the PolarFire SOC documentation. It works pretty well, and uses tio (which I find much more pleasant to work with) instead of minicom.

#!/bin/bash
tmux new-session -d -s 'polarfire-serial-dashboard'
tmux split-window -v
tmux split-window -h
tmux select-pane -t 0
tmux split-window -h
tmux respawn-pane -t0 -k "tio /dev/ttyUSB0"
tmux respawn-pane -t1 -k "tio /dev/ttyUSB1"
tmux respawn-pane -t2 -k "tio /dev/ttyUSB2"
tmux respawn-pane -t3 -k "tio /dev/ttyUSB3"
tmux select-layout tiled
tmux set -g mouse on
tmux attach-session -t 'polarfire-serial-dashboard'

I’ve also setup the scripts as a gist here: PolarFire SOC Icicle Gists

First Boot

After getting everything figured out I was able to boot, attached to all of the UART serial consoles attached, and interact with the linux login.

I was a little excited at this point, so I announced my accomplishment to the world:

Finally got around to playing with my Polarfire SoC Icicle Kit. Screenshot is minicom attached to all 4 (!) UART serial debug consoles. riscv64 running linux for now, want to play with the seL4 port though. Maybe an attempt to port #serenityos? 😃 #riscv #polarfire pic.twitter.com/q9EF98NhF3

— Brian Gianforcaro (@bgianf) November 26, 2020