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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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9 years ago

Assuming that one wants to use the PCIe capability in the Altera FPGA, what list of t

The general idea is to send files from PC to the FPGA board, they are processed and then sent back to the PC after processing. More specifically video file shall be sent for processing and then received back by the PC after processing e.g change of resolution or some other complex change in the nature of the video.

Does one need to know arcane skills like writing windows drivers?

2 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    Hi,

    I am not sure, I understand your question correctly. Are you asking if you need to write an OS based driver for your custom application running on the FPGA connected through PCIe? Yes, you will need to do that, since a FPGA is very flexible and there are hundreds of use models. As far as I am aware of there is a Linux skeleton driver which can be used to develop an application specific driver. I do not think there is a Windows driver skeleton available.

    Cheers,

    fade
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    9 years ago

    Hello XAUI,

    There are a number of resources with examples available from Microsoft but this is material for people with experience. PCI, as you propose it, will not be easy.

    What you could decide is stream the file over by GB Ethernet to a Nios II configuration, then process with the FPGA part it and send it back to the CPU and then over GB Ethernet to the PC.

    If you use DMA for the link between the FPGA and de TSE I think this could be a really fast solution because the CPU only needs to manage the buffers and not transfer the data.

    This solution could run on a DE2-115 or the like.

    Best Regards,

    Johi