Microwatt Integration

Open PowerPC Core on Modern FPGAs

Overview

Microwatt is an open-source PowerPC soft core developed by Anton Blanchard and IBM. PowerCommons has extended Microwatt to run on high end FPGA platforms with full Linux support.

Core: Microwatt v0.1
Architecture: PowerPC 64-bit
Platform: Xilinx VCU-118
Status: Linux operational

Development Work

Native Microwatt SoC

Implementation using Microwatt’s native build system (FuseSoC/VHDL):

• VCU-118 board support with debug capabilities
• DDR4 memory integration via LiteDRAM
• Linux boot from native Microwatt

Details →

LiteX Framework Integration

Integration of Microwatt into LiteX SoC framework:

• PowerPC support in LiteX BIOS
• Endianness and boot protocol fixes
• Linux boot through LiteX infrastructure

Details →

Key Achievements

Upstream Contributions

• Microwatt: VCU-118 platform support merged
• LiteX: PowerPC architecture fixes merged
• LiteDRAM: DDR4 timing configurations

Resources

• Microwatt Repository
• PowerCommons Fork
• Build Documentation