SysGen: Create New HWCOSIM Target with NMM Ports

Hardware Co-Simulation (HWCOSIM) is a great feature in System Generator (SysGen) that allows users to run the full or part of a SysGen design on the FPGA and increase the simulation speed dramatically. SysGen already includes HWCOSIM plugins for commonly used DSP demo boards. Users can easily use the SysGen Board Description Builder (SBDBuilder) to create new HWCOSIM plugins for unsupported boards or unsupported features (for example non-memory mapped or NMM ports) on existing boards. Below are  step-by-step instructions on how to create a new HWCOSIM plugin with NMM ports using ML506 as an example.

Step 1: Open "System Generator" properties window and select "New Compilation Target".

Step 2: The SBDBuilder window pops up.
Board Name: use a descriptive name so you know what the target is later.
System Clock Frequency/Pin Location: enter the actual clock frequency and pin location for your board.
JTAG Options Boundary Scan Position: the position of the target device in the JTAG chain. You can use IMPACT to help fill this in (see a snapshot below for the JTAG chain detected by IMPACT). As shown in the JTAG chain snapshot, the target device xc5vsx50t is the 5th in the chain.
JTAG Options IR Lengths: click the "Detect" button next to it auto-fill it.
Target Devices: click "Add" button to select the target device.

Step 3: Click "Add" button in the "Non-Memory Mapped Ports" section to add NMM ports for HWCOSIM. This brings up the "Configure a Port" window below. Enter a port name, select port direction, Pin LOC and select PULLUP or PULLDOWN if needed. Click "Add Pin" button and the newly added pin will show up in the Pin List below. Click "Save and Start New" button if you want to add more pins or click "Save and Close" if you are done adding NMM ports.

Step 4: The SBDBuilder with all information entered is shown below. Click the "Install" button to install the new board configuration to the SysGen plugins directory.

Step 5: A window with tokens for the NMM ports will pop up once the installation is complete.

Step 6: Save the library with the NMM port tokens and they can now be used in your SysGen model like any other SysGen block. A test model is shown below.

 Step 7: Open "System Generator" properties window again and now you should see the newly created board "ML506 JTAG NMM" in the HWCOSIM target list. Select it as the compilation target.

Step 8: That's it. The rest of steps to use the new compilation target are the same as any other HWCOSIM. The only difference is that Simulink no longer has control/visibility of the two NMM ports. They are now implemented as IOs on FPGA. In this example, while the simulation is running, if you toggle the GPIO SW1 on the board, it will turn on/off the GPIO LED0.