xbutil Utility

Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation: Application Acceleration Development (UG1393)

Document ID
UG1393
Release Date
2021-03-22
Version
2020.2 English
Tip: The next generation of the xbutil command-line tool is in preview mode for the 2020.2 release of XRT. This version will replace the current xbutil in a future release of XRT. Refer to https://xilinx.github.io/XRT/2020.2/html/xbutil2.html for information about the new utility.

The Xilinx® Board Utility (xbutil) is a standalone command line utility that is included with the Xilinx Runtime (XRT) installation package. The xbutil command only supports platforms on Alveo Data Center accelerator cards, and embedded processor-based platforms.

Accelerator cards are partitioned into a user function and a management function to provide different levels of card access. The user function allows end users to load and run their applications, while the management function is for system administrators to manage the card. The xbutil utility interacts with the user function. The xbmgmt utility, which requires root privilege, is for interacting with the management function. The reason for splitting the function access between the two utilities is to provide some security for the management features of the tool.

XRT needs to be installed and identified on the card. For customized Alveo card setups in a Vivado flow, xbutil is not used. It includes multiple commands to validate and identify the installed accelerator card(s) along with additional card details including on card memory, host interface, target platform name, and system information. This information can be used for both card administration and application debugging.

Important: Although xbutil supports embedded processor platforms, only the following commands are available for use with those platforms: dump, help, program (for DFX platforms only), query, scan, and status.

The xbutil command line format is as follows:

xbutil <command> [options]

Where the available commands and options are given below.

Tip: You can use the help command to list the available xbutil commands and options:
xbutil help