Nios designs, Nios designs –35 – Altera High-Speed Development Kit, Stratix GX Edition User Manual

Page 117

Altera Corporation

Quartus II Version 3.0

7–35

Diagnostic Test Details

Nios Designs

The Nios embedded processor is an Altera-based 32-bit RISC embedded
configurable CPU for use with Altera FPGAs. It has an extensive suite of
software development tools, Altera and third-party IP, and hardware
development boards and kits. You can configure the Nios processor into
either the Stratix or Stratix GX device as required.

You run Nios programs via the SOPC Builder SDK Shell interface. The
shell is a UNIX-like command-line interface. Using the shell you can
compile, run, and get statistics on the Nios programs and designs.

The information in this section assumes that you are familiar
with the use and programming of Nios-based systems. Refer to
the Altera web site (www.altera.com/nios) for more
information.

The Nios-based designs were created using SOPC Builder, which is
available in the Quartus II software. The process involves the following
steps:

Use SOPC Builder to specify the Nios processor parameters.

Add the Avalon™ on-chip bus in SOPC Builder. The Avalon bus
handles all communication between the CPU and the peripherals.

Attach customized peripherals to the Avalon on-chip bus. A UART
allows communication to the outside world through the RS232 port.
All of the peripherals are personalized via wizard tools.

Generate the system as a Verilog HDL or VHDL netlist. SOPC
Builder generation also produces a software development kit (SDK)
used for software development.

Compile, synthesize, and place-and-route using Quartus II
software.

The SDK includes 3 directories:

■

inc

—The inc directory has the include files necessary to use the

peripherals, some function prototypes, and Assembly language
megafunctions.

■

lib

—The lib directory contains a makefile and archive, source, and

object files for libraries usable by your Nios system.

■

src

—The src directory contains all user-developed source code. It

also has some examples for use in testing the system.