Occasional Contributor
New ContributorHi Himanshu,
Thanks for your help. I will try it as soon as I receive a reply from Intel regarding the use of a PLL to overclock the NIOS V. The SDRAM on the DE10-Lite board requires at least a 100 MHz clock to run properly, so the whole system needs to be overclocked. NIOS II works perfectly well at 100 MHz, but it seems there is an issue with overclocking the NIOS V, or maybe (probably) I'm missing something.
Thanks again
Best regards
Vincent
New ContributorHi Himanshu,
This message to inform you, and everyone in the Intel/Terasic community who might be interested, that I managed to implement a NIOS V using the SDRAM on a DE10-Lite board. A few things need to be carefully considered though if you want the system to work.
First, it seems the NIOS V is unable to run at 100 MHz on the DE10-Lite board (while the NIOS II has no problems at 100 MHz). The timing analysis revealed that the maximum frequency is slightly above 95 MHz (maybe Intel people could confirm or otherwise indicate how to improve the NIOS V top frequency on that board). So, I lowered the speed down to 90 MHz (using the altpll IP). By lowering the frequency, I feared the SDRAM module wouldn't work properly since the manufacturer recommends higher frequencies, but it seems to be robust against frequency changes.
Second, you need to select at least the Performance (High-effort - increases runtime) optimization mode in the Compiler Settings. In Balanced mode, the system seems to fail reaching the required timing performance.
Normally, by doing this, you're in business...!
I would also like to add that I experienced some strange behaviours on Ashling RiscFree IDE. First, sometimes the program fails to updated when I want to run a new version. Say for instance, I first run a simple 'Hello World' and then I want to add new instructions, the simple 'Hello World' keeps on running (even when terminating the program properly from the console). I have to restart the whole download process over, and sometimes even need to reset the system before the new app version is taken into account. Any idea where this issue might come from?
Best regards
Vincent
