Nios II Classic Software Developer’s Handbook

ID 683282
Date 5/14/2015
Public
Document Table of Contents

7.7. Creating Embedded Drivers for HAL Device Classes

The HAL supports a number of generic device model classes. By writing a device driver as described in this section, you describe to the HAL an instance of a specific device that falls into one of its known device classes. This section defines a consistent interface for driver functions so that the HAL can access the driver functions uniformly.

The following sections define the API for the following classes of devices:

  • Character-mode devices
  • File subsystems
  • DMA devices
  • Timer devices used as system clock
  • Timer devices used as timestamp clock
  • Flash memory devices
  • Ethernet devices

The following sections describe how to implement device drivers for each class of device, and how to register them for use in HAL-based systems.