Testing UIO with Interrupt on Zynq Ultrascale

Testing UIO with Interrupt on Zynq Ultrascale

Building the Hardware

To evaluate this flow, I have used the AXI GPIO in the Programmable Logic with the interrupt enabled, and connected to the PS IRQ:



Generate the Output Products, Create HDL wrapper, Generate Bitstream and Export to SDK to create the HDF

Create the Linux Image in Petalinux

Here, I used Petalinux 2017.4 to create the Image with the steps below:

  • petalinux-create -t project --template zynqMP -n linux_images

  • cd linux_images

  • petalinux-config --get-hw-description=<path to HDF>

    • DTG Settings → (zcu102-rev1.0) MACHINE_NAME

  • petalinux-config -c kernel

    • For Petalinux  < 2019.1:

    • Device Drivers -> Userspace I/O drivers

      • <*> Userspace I/O platform driver with generic IRQ handling

      • <*> Userspace platform driver with generic irq and dynamic memory

    • For Petalinux 2019.1:

    • Device Drivers -> Userspace I/O drivers

      • <*> Userspace I/O platform driver with generic IRQ handling

      • <*> Userspace platform driver with generic irq and dynamic memory

      • <*> Xilinx AI Engine driver

  • Open the system-user.dtsi in linux-images\project-spec\meta-user\recipes-bsp\device-tree\files and make the mods below:

/include/ "system-conf.dtsi" / { chosen { bootargs = "earlycon clk_ignore_unused uio_pdrv_genirq.of_id=generic-uio"; stdout-path = "serial0:115200n8"; }; }; &axi_gpio_0 { compatible = "generic-uio"; };
  • petalinux-build

  • cd images/linux

  • petalinux-package --boot --fsbl zynqmp_fsbl.elf --fpga design_1_wrapper.bit --u-boot


Place the BOOT.BIN and the image.ub onto the SD card and boot the kernel.

Test the Interrupt

To test, make sure that the UIO is probed:

  • ls /dev

You should see that the uio0 is listed here.

Make sure that the IRQ is registered:

  • cat /proc/interrupts


You should see this registered as below:


To generate an interrupt, we can write to the ISR in the AXI GPIO. Below is a snippet of the register space
from the AXI GPIO product guide

For example, we can use the devmem utility to write to this register from the linux console:


Then rerun, the cat /proc/interrupts and the interrupt count should be incremented for the gpio:


If users would like to debug a Linux application in SDK, then they can follow on from here with the wiki article here

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