Pmod Wifi Tutorial - Why is Pmod SD needed?

[ibtyn]

Hi everyone,

I am working on the tutorial of the Pmod Wifi (found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTeTMv3oiPw) and I don't really understand the role of the Pmod SD.

From what I saw, in the tutorial, the Pmod SD is used to hold the static HTML pages that are then loaded in the browser. I would like to try something simpler, basic Wifi communication, and I wanted to leave out the Pmod SD IP from the block design, but then I got critical warnings at the bitstream generation. No problems arise when the Pmod SD IP is added, though.

So I was wondering, is there a more important role to the Pmod SD that I did not seem to get?

The critical warnings say: 
[IP_Flow 19-3298] Detected external port differences while upgrading IP 'PmodWIFI_axi_quad_spi_0_0'. These changes may impact your design.
[IP_Flow 19-3298] Detected external port differences while upgrading IP 'PmodWIFI_axi_gpio_0_0'. These changes may impact your design.
[IP_Flow 19-3298] Detected external port differences while upgrading IP 'PmodWIFI_axi_gpio_1_0'. These changes may impact your design.

I am using Vivado 2015.4.

I would appreciate any ideas on how these modules work or what I could have done wrong.

Thanks a lot!

[jpeyron]

Hi @ibtyn,

The PmodWifi upgrade because a the axi quad spi block within it was upgraded in this version of vivado. In this case, I do not believe this will make an issue. I did find a thread on the xilinx forum talking about these warning here. In this situation vivado only removed a parameter that should not effect the operation of the PmodWifi IP core. What develop board are you using? I.E. Arty, Zybo... You do not need to use an the PmodSD . The SD is where the webpages are being stored. You will need to make changes to the SDK demo code for the PmodWifi to reflect your simpler design.

cheers,

Jon

[ibtyn]

Hi @jpeyron,

Thank you for your response! I am using a Nexys4 DDR board. I did not find any problems despite the warnings, the generation of the bitstream did not fail. It was just strange that the warning did not occur with the PmodSD.. I had to ask whether there was a hidden connection between them.

Thank you!