Memory

Design and develop the shared memory and data register components of an SoC application

SoC Blockset™ enables simulation and evaluation of shared memory transactions in Simulink^®. To include a memory system in your SoC model, configure a memory controller for the desired number of memory channels, and then connect the controller to memory channel blocks for arbitrating and handling memory traffic.

SoC Blockset enables the simulation and evaluation of shared memory transactions in Simulink. Visualize post-simulation performance and bandwidth metrics before deploying to SoC device by using the Logic Analyzer app.

Blocks

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Memory Model

Memory Channel	Stream data through a memory channel
Memory Controller	Arbitrate memory transactions for one or more Memory Channel blocks
AXI4 Random Access Memory	Model random access through external memory (Since R2022b)
AXI4-Stream to Software	Stream AXI4 data from FPGA to software (Since R2022b)
Software to AXI4-Stream	Stream AXI4 data from software to FPGA (Since R2022b)
AXI4 Video Frame Buffer	Model connection between two hardware algorithms through external memory (Since R2022b)
Memory Traffic Generator	Generate traffic towards memory controller
Register Channel	Timing model for transfer of register values
Interrupt Channel	Send interrupt to processor from hardware (Since R2020b)
AXI4 Master Sink	Receive random access memory data
AXI4 Master Source	Generate random access memory data
Stream Data Sink	Receive continuous stream data
Stream Data Source	Generate continuous stream data
IP Core Register Read	Model register writes from software to hardware (Since R2020a)

Hardware Logic Connectivity

SoC Bus Selector	Convert bus to control signals
SoC Bus Creator	Convert control signals to bus
Stream FIFO	Control backpressure between hardware logic and upstream data interface
Stream Connector	Connect two IPs with data streaming interfaces

Processor Software Connectivity

Register Read	Read data from a register region on the specified IP core
Register Write	Write data to a register region on the specified IP core
Stream Read	Stream data from shared memory to processor algorithms
Stream Write	Stream data from processor algorithms to shared memory (Since R2020b)

Video Stream Connectivity

Video Stream FIFO	Control backpressure between hardware logic and upstream video interface
Video Stream Connector	Connect two IPs with video streaming interfaces

Apps

Logic Analyzer

Visualize, measure, and analyze transitions and states over time

Tools

Memory Mapper

Configure memory map for SoC application

Model Settings

Hardware Implementation Pane

Topics

Design

Memory and Register Data Transfers
Introduction to memory and register transfers.
External Memory Channel Protocols
Supported memory channel protocols and control signals.
AXI4-Stream Interface
How to design your model for AXI4-Stream vector or scalar interface generation.
Simplified AXI4 Master Interface
Description of AXI4 Master protocol, and how you can design your model for IP core generation with AXI4-Master interfaces.
AXI4-Stream Video Interface
How to design your model for IP core generation with AXI4-stream video interfaces.

Simulation

Simulation Diagnostics
SoC Blockset enables simulation and evaluation of memory transactions in Simulink without the need to deploy a model to an SoC device.
Simulation Performance Tips
Suggestions for enhancing simulation performance of SoC models.
Simulation Performance Plots
SoC Blockset enables post-simulation analysis of memory diagnostic data.

Measurement

Memory Performance Information from FPGA Execution
Obtain memory interconnect traffic information from a design running on FPGA.

Featured Examples

Random Access of External Memory

Model external memory accesses from FPGA for rotating an ASCII art image. Many applications require FPGA to access memory in random fashion as per the requirements of algorithm. You will learn how to design memory address generation along with other AXI4 master signals to read and write specific regions of memory using SoC Blockset. You will simulate, implement and verify your design on hardware.

Open Script

Histogram Equalization Using Video Frame Buffer

Perform histogram equalization with HDMI input and output and using external memory for video frame buffering.

Open Script

Accelerate SoC Simulation by Varying Abstraction Levels

Different levels of abstraction available for SoC architecture and how to accelerate the simulation speed of SoC models by choosing the right abstraction level.

Open Live Script

Analyze Memory Bandwidth Using Traffic Generators

Demonstrates how to analyze memory bandwidth for an SoC application. In memory-intensive hardware designs, you may have multiple masters accessing a common DDR memory. In such cases, it is important to analyze the dynamic requirement of all memory masters to guide algorithm design and hardware board requirement for deployment. You can simulate the memory traffic using Memory traffic generators, analyze the bandwidth usage and verify it on the hardware.

Open Script

Receive Signal Waveform Using DDR4 on Xilinx RFSoC Device

Design, simulate, and deploy a system to write and read the captured RF samples from external double data rate 4 (DDR4) memory in Simulink® with an SoC Blockset® implementation targeted on the Xilinx® Zynq® UltraScale+™ RFSoC ZCU111 evaluation kit. In this example, you can write the captured samples of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) into external programmable logic (PL) DDR4 memory, read the samples from the PL DDR4 memory, and send them to the processor to display. A tone signal is generated in FPGA using a numerically controlled oscillator (NCO) to verify the receive path.

Open Script