Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition User Guide: Platform Designer

ID 683609
Date 10/04/2021
Public

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5.2. Avalon® Streaming Interfaces

High bandwidth components with streaming data typically use Avalon® streaming interfaces for the high throughput datapath. Streaming interfaces can also use memory-mapped connection interfaces to provide an access point for control. In contrast to the memory-mapped interconnect, the Avalon® streaming interconnect always creates a point-to-point connection between a single data source and data sink.

Figure 168 contains the following connection pairs:

  • Data source in the Rx Interface transfers data to the data sink in the FIFO.
  • Data source in the FIFO transfers data to the Tx Interface data sink.

The memory-mapped interface allows a processor to access the data source, FIFO, or data sink to provide system control. If your source and sink interfaces have different formats, for example, a 32-bit source and an 8-bit sink, Platform Designer automatically inserts the necessary adapters. You can view the adapters on the System View tab by clicking System > Show System with Platform Designer Interconnect.

Figure 168.  Avalon® Memory-Mapped and Avalon® Streaming Interfaces

The following diagram shows a source-sink pair that includes only the data signal. The sink must be able to receive data as soon as the source interface comes out of reset.

Figure 169.  Avalon® Streaming Connection Between the Source and Sink
Figure 170.  Signals Indicating the Start and End of Packets, Channel Numbers, Error Conditions, and BackpressureAll data transfers using Avalon® streaming interconnect occur synchronously on the rising edge of the associated clock interface. Throughput and frequency of a system depends on the components and how they are connected.

The IP Catalog includes Avalon® streaming components that you can use to create datapaths, including datapaths whose input and output streams have different properties. Generated systems that include memory-mapped host and agent components may also use these Avalon® streaming components because Platform Designer generation creates interconnect with a structure similar to a network topology, as described in Platform Designer Transformations. The following sections introduce the Avalon® streaming components.