Nios® V Processor Software Developer Handbook

ID 743810
Date 10/12/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

6.3.2.2. Partial HAL Support

As all peripherals vendors provide a header file that defines the peripheral's low level hardware interface. You can use the definitions provided in the header to access the hardware inside HAL.

Inevitably, some peripherals have features that does not map well to our general-purpose HAL API. For these device, HAL API provides the UNIX-style ioctl() function to access them.

For example, Intel provides a general-purpose parallel I/O core that can be use with Nios® V processor. However, this device does not fit into any generic device model class provided by HAL. As such, it provides a header file and a few dedicated accessors functions. ioctl() can be used to integrate its functionality into Nios® V processor via HAL.

For complete details regarding software support for a peripheral, refer to the peripheral’s documentation.