Intel® FPGA AI Suite: SoC Design Example User Guide

ID 768979
Date 2/12/2024
Public

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3.5.3. Configuring the SoC FPGA Development Kit UART Connection

The SoC FPGA development kit boards have USB-to-serial converters that allows the host computer to see the board as a virtual serial port:
  • The Intel® Arria® 10 SX SoC FPGA Development Kit has a FTDI USB-to-serial converter chip.
  • The Intel Agilex® 7 FPGA I-Series Transceiver-SoC Development Kit has a USB-to-serial converter on the IO48 daughter card.

Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and other modern Linux distributions have built-in drivers for the FTDI USB-to-serial converter chip, so no driver installation is necessary on those platforms.

On Microsoft* Windows*, the Windows SoC EDS installer automatically installs the necessary drivers. For details, see the SoC GSRD for your SoC FPGA development kit at the following URL: https://www.rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/GSRD

The serial communication parameters are as follows:

  • Baud rate: 115200
  • Parity: None
  • Flow control: None
  • Stop bits: 1

On Windows, you can use utilities such as TeraTerm or PuTTY to connect the board. You can configure these utilities from their tool menus.

On Linux, you can use the Minicom utility. Configure the Minicom utility as follows:
  1. Determine the device name associated with the virtual serial port on your host development system. The virtual serial port is typically named /dev/ttyUSB0.
    1. Before connecting the mini USB cable to the SoC FPGA development kit, determine which USB serial devices are installed with the following command:
      ls /dev/ttyUSB*
    2. Connect the mini USB cable from the SoC FPGA development kit to the host development system.
    3. Confirm the new device connection with the ls command again:
      ls /dev/ttyUSB*
  2. If you do not have the Minicom application installed on the host development system, install it now.
    • OnRed Hat* Enterprise Linux* 8: sudo yum install minicom
    • On Ubuntu*: use sudo apt-get install minicom
  3. Configure Minicom as follows:
    1. Start Minicom:
      sudo minicom -s
    2. Under Serial Port Setup choose the following:
      • Serial Device: /dev/ttyUSB0 (Change this value to match the system value that you found earlier, if needed)
      • Bps/Par/Bits: 115200 8N1
      • Hardware Flow Control: No
      • Software Flow Control: No
      Press [ESC] to return to the main configuration menu.
    3. Select Save Setup as dfl to save the default setup. Then select Exit.