For applications that require software and hardware to work together, you must generate the hardware handoff XSA file, import the file to the Vitis IDE or PetaLinux, and continue software development. The Vitis software platform is designed for developing software for heterogeneous systems. The Vitis IDE supports the platform-based design flow on Linux and the embedded software development flow on both Linux and Windows.
Based on your workflow and Vivado Design Suite project type, the Vitis IDE shows either
export hardware or export platform for generating the hardware handoff XSA files. Both
commands export a file with an .xsa extension, but the files have different properties
and contents depending on the command you use. The Vitis IDE accepts both types of XSA files as input, recognizes the XSA
type, and creates the appropriate software subsystem for the selected workflow.
PetaLinux also accepts an XSA file as the hardware description input and generates a
device tree according to the information provided by the contents of the XSA file.
For information on the platform creation process, see Creating Embedded Platforms in Vitis in the Application Acceleration Development flow of the Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation (UG1416). For information on the embedded software development process, see the Xilinx Embedded Design Tutorials: Versal Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform (UG1305) and Using the Vitis IDE in the Application Acceleration Development flow of the Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation (UG1416).