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TechDeveloper's avatar
TechDeveloper
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5 years ago
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Purchase of New Intel FPGA Development Board

Dear Sir: I am an FPGA programmer (Xilinx programmer) and I would like to sample the Intel/Altera development IDE. I am interested in purchasing a development board. However, I ...
  • James_B's avatar
    James_B
    5 years ago

    Thanks for the Kudos. I do understand . . . I have had the same issues.

    From a high level / top level viewpoint, you will be able to update the RELEASE version of the download if need.

    Overall here are the details:

    Basically, there is no First Stage Boot Loader with Nios (compared to something like Zynq 7000 series for example.) The Cyclone 10 LP does not have an ARM A53 or A9 in it . . . so you will have to use Nios and Nios can boot directly from internal memory if the program fits within your internal RAM. For most Nios programs, say 64K to 128Kbytes of memory is sufficient ... and the Cyclone 10 LP should have enough internal RAM (and I believe it also has HyperRam attached to it that you can access) that you should be okay.

    Basically, you can program the flash memory through the USB blaster, and when the FPGA boots the Nios program will be in the flash. You just have to convert the ELF file in Eclipse using mem_init_generate for make targets in Eclipse to convert the ELF to hex, and then attach the hex to your Quartus project and compile ... and the Nios instructions will be in the external flash memory. So in summary:

    1. Develop your C in Eclipse, JTAG downloading your design and testing

    2. When finished, convert ELF to hex with mem_init_generate in Eclipse

    3. Attach hex to Quartus project

    4. Compile Quartus project

    5. Program flash memory with Quartus programmer

    When you power cycle, you should see your Nios software executing (such as through Uart, led, etc.)

    Regards, James

James_B's avatar
James_B
Icon for Contributor rankContributor
5 years ago

TechDeveloper - Basically, the Nios II processor comes into two primary versions, II/e and II/f. (There is also a middle version, II/s) In short, when you setup Nios II in your design, the II/e version will be "free" and you won't have any issues using it in a design in terms of using Quartus Lite and the II/e. However, if you want the single cycle multiplier and memory management (MMU) options for the processor (among other things) you will need to get a Nios embedded license, which is about $500 I believe at the time of this writing. You can get these licenses from Mouser, Digikey, etc. I have done many Microblaze designs, as well as Nios, and the main difference is that Microblaze doesn't have a tiered systems for $ per features. In short, the Nios II/f is an IP that has to be purchased :

1. Nios II/e - free

2. Nios II/f - not free

Now onto your second question - the Max10 System Manager contains code for the USB blaster JTAG programmer and that is not free either, that is why it is programmed into the chip but the source code is not available.

Regards, James