^^
Think about this simple case.
Here is a project build by SOPC,
main components in the system are NIOS II and JPEG HW Decoder.
I write a program to tell nios read data from 8-bits input PIO or read data from SPI slave, and decode input stream as jpeg image with HW JPEG decoder.
Now there is a full system simulator called Simics. Simics is like VMWare, but more than VMWare.[and weak than VMWare] I can write a C interface with DML, a device modeling language. The c interface is normal without any special API, but should be compiled with host's compiler.[Not altera's one]
From simics viewpoint, this interface should describe what the device does.
From NIOS viewpoint, the interface should feed data into PIO or SPI and other signal hint NIOS should start processing data stream.
Question is I don't connect PIO or SPI to a real master hardware device.
All I need is write a program in C, and feed data into NIOS by JTAG or other reasonable communication channel.
How can I do this? Or anything I should read.
Thank all you again.