Rapid Implementation of Embedded Systems using Xilinx Zynq Platform

In any digital system design, it is crucial to achieve the lowest time-to-market possible. Indeed, that need has pushed large FPGA manufacturers to produce SoCs which will implement reprogrammable logic along with CPU and DSP cores. Especially, during the design of an embedded system, this can be of great significance, since it lets the designers focus on the project idea rather than dealing with special design details and the issues originating from them. In this paper we present the development of a simple, but complete embedded system based on the Xilinx Zynq SoC and the Zedboard development platform. The design included running Linux on the ARM processor, creating a simple new peripheral in Programmable Logic with HDL (both in Verilog and VHDL), writing a device driver for that peripheral and use that driver in a user application.