Nios® II Software Developer Handbook

ID 683525
Date 8/28/2023
Public
Document Table of Contents

6.2.4.1. Device Model Classes

The HAL provides models for the following classes of devices:
  • Character-mode devices—Hardware peripherals that either or both send or receive characters serially, such as a UART.
  • Timer devices—Hardware peripherals that count clock ticks and can generate periodic interrupt requests.
  • File subsystems—A mechanism for accessing files stored in physical device(s). Depending on the internal implementation, the file subsystem driver might access the underlying device(s) directly or use a separate device driver. For example, you can write a flash file subsystem driver that accesses flash using the HAL API for flash memory devices.
  • Ethernet devices—Devices that provide access to an Ethernet connection for a networking stack6. You need a networking stack to use an ethernet device.
  • Direct memory access (DMA) devices—Peripherals that perform bulk data transactions from a data source to a destination. Sources and destinations can be memory or another device, such as an Ethernet connection.
  • Flash memory devices—Nonvolatile memory devices that use a special programming protocol to store data.
6 The deliverable for NicheStack TCP/IP Stack software package and associated driver packages are discontinued starting with Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition software version 21.3 and Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition software version 21.1. A new TCP/IP stack is planned for a future version of the Intel® Quartus® Prime.