AXI UART Lite standalone driver

This page gives an overview of UARTLite BareMetal driver which is available as part of the Xilinx Vivado and SDK distribution.

Table of Contents 


Introduction



The LogiCORE™ IP AXI Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART) Lite core provides between
UART signals and the Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA®) AXI interface and also provides
a controller interface for asynchronous serial data transfer. This soft LogiCORE™ IP core is designed to
interface with the AXI4-Lite protocol.

Driver Sources

The source code for the driver is included with the Vitis Unified Software Platform installation, as well as being available in the Xilinx Github repository. 

Driver namePath in vitisPath in github
uartlite

<Vitis Install Directory>/data/embedded/XilinxProcessorIPLib/drivers/uartlite

https://github.com/Xilinx/embeddedsw/tree/master/XilinxProcessorIPLib/drivers/uartlite

Note: To view the sources for a particular release, use the rel-version tag in github.  For example, for the 2020.1 release, the proper version of the code is: https://github.com/Xilinx/embeddedsw/tree/xilinx-v2020.1/XilinxProcessorIPLib/drivers/uartlite

The driver source code is organized into different folders.  The table below shows the uartlite driver source organization. 

Directory
Description

doc

Provides the API and data structure details

data

Driver .tcl, .yaml and .mdd file

examples

Example applications that show how to use the driver features

src

Driver source files, make and cmakelists file

Note: AMD Xilinx embeddedsw build flow has been changed from 2023.2 release to adapt to the new system device tree based flow. For further information, refer to the wiki link Porting embeddedsw components to system device tree (SDT) based flow
The .yaml(in data folder) and CMakeLists.txt(in src folder) files are needed for the System Device Tree based flow. The Driver .tcl and .mdd files are for the older build flow which will be deprecated in future.

Driver Implementation

For a full list of features supported by this IP, please refer https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/ip_documentation/axi_uartlite/v2_0/pg142-axi-uartlite.pdf

Features

• AXI4-Lite interface for register access and data transfers
• Full duplex
• 16-character transmit and receive FIFOs
• Configurable number of data bits (5-8) in a character
• Configurable parity bit (odd or even or none)
• Configurable baud rate

Known Issues and Limitations

None

Example Applications

Refer to the driver examples directory for various example applications that exercise the different features of the driver. Each application is linked in the table below. The following sections describe the usage and expected output of the various applications.  These example applications can be imported into the Vitis IDE from the Board Support Package  settings tab. 

Links to Examples

Examples Path:

https://github.com/Xilinx/embeddedsw/tree/master/XilinxProcessorIPLib/drivers/uartlite/examples

Test NameExample SourceDescription
Uartlite interrupt examplexuartlite_intr_example.cThis example sends and receives data using interrupts.
Uartlite polled examplexuartlite_polled_example.cThis example sends and receives data using polling.
Uartlite tapp interrupt examplexuartlite_intr_tapp_example.cThis example just transmits the data using interrupts.

Example Application Usage

Uartlite interrupt example

This example sends and receives data using interrupts.
Expected Output
Successfully ran Uartlite interrupt Example

Uartlite polled example

This example sends and receives data using polling.

Expected Output

Successfully ran Uartlite polled Example

Uartlite tapp interrupt example

This example just transmits the data using interrupts.
Expected Output
Successfully ran Uartlite interrupt tapp Example

Example Design Architecture

NA


Change Log

2023.2

https://github.com/Xilinx/embeddedsw/blob/xlnx_rel_v2023.2/doc/ChangeLog#L125

2023.1

https://github.com/Xilinx/embeddedsw/blob/xilinx_v2023.1/doc/ChangeLog#L138

2022.2

None

2022.1

https://github.com/Xilinx/embeddedsw/blob/xilinx_v2022.1/doc/ChangeLog#L119

2021.2

None

2021.1

https://github.com/Xilinx/embeddedsw/blob/xilinx_v2021.1/doc/ChangeLog#L483


2020.2

None


2020.1

None

2019.2

None

2019.1

None

2018.3

None

Related Links

© Copyright 2019 - 2022 Xilinx Inc. Privacy Policy