Forum Discussion

Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
10 years ago

Newbie Qsys Question

Hello, here's a quick question, does using Qsys imply that one must instantiate a Nios processor? I'm looking at using Rapid Serial IO or PCIe on my FPGA to interface with a TI DSP chip. But I don't ...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
10 years ago

--- Quote Start ---

why would you want to use Qsys if there isn't a processor involved? I don't see what it buys you.

--- Quote End ---

Qsys let's you connect a variety of IP blocks relatively easily and it will generate the necessary instantiation and interconnects. Whether or not it is a net positive or negative probably depends on the scope of your system, and likely doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you have a processor in it or not.

TI DSP -> (PCIe or SRIO or addr/data bus or SPI or I2C or ...) -> [Qsys] -> various peripherals

That's a relatively straight forward system to produce.

Personally I think if you're talking about more than a couple peripherals, or are involving any memory controllers / DMA, Qsys makes sense.