Altera Nios II - Manual (Page 6)

1–2 Chapter 1: Overview of the Nios II Flash Programmer
How the Flash Programmer Works
Nios II Flash Programmer User Guide © March 2014 Altera Corporation
Prerequisites
This user guide assumes that you are familiar with the Nios II hardware and software
development flow. You need to be familiar with the contents of the following
documents:
■ Nios II Hardware Development Tutorial
■ Getting Started with the Graphical User Interface chapter of the Nios II Software
Developer’s Handbook
If you use the Nios II Flash Programmer to program FPGA configuration data to flash
memory, you also must understand the configuration method used on the board.
f
Refer to AN346: Using the Nios II Configuration Controller Reference Designs , or to the
reference manual for your specific Altera development board.
Nios II Flash Programmer GUI and Command-Line Utilities
You can run the Nios II Flash Programmer from a GUI or from the command line. The
GUI displays the command-line equivalents of the actions you direct it to perform.
For information about the flash programmer GUI, refer to
Chapter 2, Using the Flash
Programmer GUI , and for information about using the flash programmer
command-line utilities, refer to Chapter 3, Using the Flash Programmer from the
Command Line .
The following tools allow you to run the Nios II Flash Programmer:
■ Nios II Software Build Tools for Eclipse™ – The Nios II Software Build Tools (SBT)
for Eclipse provides easy access to the Nios II Flash Programmer GUI. The flash
programmer GUI is an easy-to-use interface that allows you to control the flash
programmer features using settings you can store and reuse. This access method is
suitable for most flash programming needs.
■ Nios II Command Shell – The Nios II Command Shell provides commands that
control the flash programmer features. You might have to calculate some
parameters manually. You can also start the Nios II Flash Programmer GUI from
the command line.
How the Flash Programmer Works
The Nios II Flash Programmer has two parts, the host and the target, as shown in
Figure 1–1 . The host portion runs on your computer. It sends flash programming files
and programming instructions over a download cable to the target. The target portion
is a hardware design, running in the FPGA. It accepts the programming data—flash
content and required information about the target flash memory device—sent by the
host, and follows the instructions to write data to the flash memory device.