SDK overview

The Xilinx® Software Development Kit (SDK) is a full-fledged embedded software development environment for Xilinx embedded processors. SDK is based on the Eclipse open source platform. SDK features include the following:

Feature-rich C/C++ code editor and compilation environment
Project management
Application build configuration and automatic Makefile generation
Error navigation
Well-integrated environment for source-level debugging and profiling of embedded targets
Source code version control

In addition to the above native Eclipse provided features, SDK also provides the following tools for use in Xilinx embedded software development:

Reference software applications.
Xilinx Microprocessor Debugger (XMD): A debug agent used to communicate with Xilinx embedded processors using JTAG. It also provides various low-level debugging features not directly available in SDK.
FPGA programmer: Used to program the Xilinx FPGA with the bitstream.
Flash programmer: Used for burning bitstreams and software application images into external parallel NOR Flash devices.
Simple bootloader generator: Used for automatically bootloading your embedded software applications from parallel Flash.
Linker script generator: Used for quickly mapping your application image across the hardware memory space.

Refer to What's new in SDK for a list of new features in SDK. To effectively use SDK, Xilinx recommends that you familiarize yourself with the various topics in the Concepts section of this help system.

For more information about the Eclipse CDT project, refer to http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/.