Altera TSE driver and example program for lwIP (1.3.2)

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NO! NOT CORRECT!!!

NicheStack IS NOT OPEN SOURCE!

http://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/nichestack

BillA

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Oops, yes, the FreeRTOS home page links to the InterNiche stack.. I didn't notice it was a "Buy Now"!

Perhaps their webserver example using FreeTCPIP (on a Actel A2F-EVAL-KIT fpga) is a better start for porting to Altera. I imagine any FPGA port (like fNET) is a closer than starting with EtherSex/uhttpd-avr/NutOS-NutNet, or something else originally targeting a microcontroller.

Billa,

Bit 31 is set of the address (being a non-cached pointer) and that may be causing the symbol lookup to fail.

can you describe the details?

thank you!

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The following optimization can be applied to lwip_tse_mac.c:

In function tse_sgdmaRx_isr: Replace the init_tset_descriptor function call (spans 6 or 7 lines) just after label _dump: with the following:

IOWR_32DIRECT(&tse_ptr->desc[ALTERA_TSE_FIRST_RX_SGDMA_DESC_OFST].write_addr, 0, (u32_t) ethernetif->lwip_rx_pbuf[ethernetif->lwipRxIndexIsr]->payload);

IOWR_8DIRECT(&tse_ptr->desc[ALTERA_TSE_FIRST_RX_SGDMA_DESC_OFST].control, 0, ALTERA_AVALON_SGDMA_DESCRIPTOR_CONTROL_OWNED_BY_HW_MSK);

I don't claim credit for this - I see they did this in the NIOS 12.1 TSE driver and it makes a lot of sense.

Bill A

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Bill,

There is no init_tset_descriptor function in the driver. Should it be the alt_avalon_sgdma_construct_stream_to_mem_desc function call in tse_mac_rcv?

Igor

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I removed (all?) the bugs (The 4 byte SGDMA bug is available in code, but I didn't enable it yet, because I haven't seen any problems) and added multiple PHY support. If you are interested in using this BSP you will have to read the README and the lwip_main.h file to see how you can implement it.

Please have a look at : https://github.com/engineeringspirit/freelwip-nios-ii if you're interested in an FreeRTOS with LwIP BSP for in your Nios II IDE (tested with 11.0 till 12.0sp1)

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Is there an off-the-shelf development kit (altera, terasic, etc) that this will work out of the box with? I understand a TSE must be instantiated, but what kind of PHY chip? I think BillA used the Marvell 88E1119R in the lwip port, but I believe it was a custom cyclone3 board.

If no COTS, is there any tips on the thought process involved in porting the design to different phys?

Igor,

It's (init_tse_descriptor) is in lwip_tse_mac.c.

Happy,

You can add a custom or non-default PHY using the run-time add function alt_tse_phy_add_profile. I use this now and use a common lwIP/TSE driver in 4 products so they can all share the same code. I also deleted the defaults in the Altera code - I won't be switching and don't use any of them. The individual NIOS II projects each include the BSP for the board but they reference the same common code. Fortunately, 12.x fixes the bug in 10.x that prevented referencing common code. Yes, we used the 88E119R. I've also moved 3 of the 4 Cyclone III projects to NIOS 12.x and have had no trouble with the TSE or with lwIP, which was also upgraded to 4.1. Fortunately lwIP is very portable.

BillA

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Igor,

It's (init_tse_descriptor) is in lwip_tse_mac.c.

Happy,

You can add a custom or non-default PHY using the run-time add function alt_tse_phy_add_profile. I use this now and use a common lwIP/TSE driver in 4 products so they can all share the same code. I also deleted the defaults in the Altera code - I won't be switching and don't use any of them. The individual NIOS II projects each include the BSP for the board but they reference the same common code. Fortunately, 12.x fixes the bug in 10.x that prevented referencing common code. Yes, we used the 88E119R. I've also moved 3 of the 4 Cyclone II projects to NIOS 12.x and have had no trouble with the TSE or with lwIP, which was also upgraded to 4.1. Fortunately lwIP is very portable.

BillA

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BillA, is there an updated set of instructions for the example project in 12.x? I need to leverage a solution that is royalty free, hooray lwIP, but am having trouble following the instructions found in post# 1 for Nios IDE 8.1.

Any help?

What is the trouble? The concepts in the original instructions still apply: Create a NIOS II library, base it on your BSP, add lwIP and the ethernet driver. Also, make the changes that fix the bugs mentioned many posts back.

I agree and admit that this original post and ZIP is really stale. I'll see what I can do, but in the meantime, let me know where you're stuck (if you still are).

BillA

Hi BillA,

May I know how much throughput the 1000M Ethernet can achieve for RX and TX on your Cyclone III board? Thanks.

Twenty

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Hi BillA,

May I know how much throughput the 1000M Ethernet can achieve for RX and TX on your Cyclone III board? Thanks.

Twenty

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This is tough to answer because it's application dependent and very dependent on available memory.

I can say for our products that send a lot of data (images) we used a custom UDP protocol because TCP was under 100MBS while UDP can get upwards of 500MBS. (these are bits per second)

For our product that receives a lot of data and sends very little, we set the MAC for 100MBS because at 1000MBS the packet rate is so fast the Cyclone III cannot keep up with the interrupt rate. So it drops packets and actually slows down the link. We found at 100MBS there are no dropped packets and we can run the product at its max speed. It was probably faster at 1000MBS but I prefer an error-free transport and 100MBS is enough. It also spread out the receive over more time which I thought was better.

Take care,

Bill