As a convenience to USRP2 users, we have made available for download
the firmware images used to program the SD card for the USRP2.
The USRP2 has two binary blobs that get loaded into the hardware at
boot time. The first is the FPGA bit stream, which programs the FPGA
logic, and the second is the compiled code for the embedded
microprocessor running on the FPGA. These images are then written to
an SD card that is read at every power up, and implement all the
standard functionality of the USRP2 hardware and communication with
GNU Radio over its GbE interface.
The FPGA image is created using the Xilinx ISE Foundation tool chain
from Verilog source code, and the microprocessor binary is created
using the Xilinx EDK port of GCC to the Microblaze architecture.
(Note: the embedded processor is an Open Source implementation of the
Microblaze instruction set, NOT the Microblaze itself.)
These images are published at:
http://gnuradio.org/releases/usrp2-bin/trunk
As the FPGA code, the microprocessor firmware, and host driver code
all work together in lockstep fashion, it is critical that one
maintains compatible versions of these. To that end, we will maintain
these binary images such that you can rely upon using them with the
latest trunk host code, and not have to obtain the above tools to
create your own. It is important to note that the downloadable
binaries may not be the most recent versions–we will only revise them
when changes dictate we do so to maintain compatibility among the FPGA
code, firmware, and current host code.
The tool used to write these images is documented in the following GNU
Radio website wiki page:
http://gnuradio.org/trac/wiki/USRP2UserFAQ
We anticipate that there will be some churn in these as the USRP2
software is finalized for the GNU Radio 3.2 release, but once
released, the 3.2.x release series should see fewer updates.
Johnathan C.
Corgan Enterprises LLC