Daily Update – Day 8

– Finished the chapter 9 tutorial of the book “Embedded SoPC Design With Nios® II Processor And VHDL Examples”. The tutorial implements a Nios® II soft core processor through the Qsys® software, which is included in the Quarthus® Web Edition software from Altera. The Nios® II soft core processor can be customized before downloading it’s design into an FPGA. Two files are particularly important after the compilation of the Nios® II customized design :  .sopcinfo and .sopc. The first contains information vital to create programs for the Nios® II (such as the processor custom features), and the latter contains the information required to configure an FPGA with the customized Nios® II  design.

– Run tests on the Qsys® and Quarthus® softwares to understand better the development cycle. In particular when each file type is created. Also researched on the purpose of each file type.

– Started researching how to program the implemented Nios® II soft core processor. The language used to program the processor is C, and the IDE used is an Eclipse IDE specific for the Nios® II processor. Before programming for the Nios® II processor, it is required information regarding the specific Nios® II design, and this information is contained in the .sopcinfo file generated after the compilation of the Nios® II.