Chapter 9: The Firmware Development Process

Now that we have a functioning circuit board, it is time to flesh out some key portions of the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) algorithm, including communication with the analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and continue the development of the MicroBlaze processor firmware. When developing firmware, it is important to make use of appropriate tools to ensure that the source code is subjected to static analysis where possible, which can head off many errors that are otherwise difficult to debug. It is also important to implement a version control system to track the evolution of the code over the project life cycle. We will discuss the importance of developing a comprehensive, at least partially automated test suite to maintain code quality as changes are made. This chapter includes several recommendations for free and commercial tools that perform each of these functions.

After completing this chapter, you will have learned how to design...