10- practical work Topic : Creating a simple program in Nios II purpose of work

10- Practical work  

Topic : Creating a simple program in Nios II     

 

Purpose of work : to get acquainted with the Nios II environment and learn how to create a simple program in the Nios II environment using the C / C ++ programming language .    

 

Theoretical part

Nios II is a 32-bit software processor optimized for implementation in Altera FPGAs . The processor is built on the architecture of RISC, has 32-bit data buses and addresses, 32 general-purpose registers and 32 external interrupt sources. In addition, it is possible to determine up to 256 own processor instructions, which is a fundamental difference between software processors from ordinary ones . These custom instructions are called from C code using automatically generated macros, which allows you not to fool with assembler inserts, but simply “access the processor function you need,” without any overhead. The library has several custominstructions (for example, math with a floating point) that can be connected when configuring the kernel. To, actually, the processor core, there are a bunch of binding units called Intellectual Property cores (IP cores ). The chi layer such blocks include timers , memory controllers, interface (UART, SPI, and so on .).

To work with Nios II, a board with an Altera FPGA installed (any FPGA is suitable), a power supply unit , quartz and a JTAG connector are required. It is desirable that there was still a configuration fle shka , external RAM and Related I , which can be poupravlyat . We also need a programmer , for example USB Blaster . The computer must have Quartus II and Nios II EDS systems

The practical part : we launch the Nios II environment . The next window will open for us. In this window, select New from the File menu and select Project . 

Fig. 1    Nios II