Nios® II Ethernet Standard Design Example

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The Nios II Ethernet Standard hardware design example provides a mix of peripherals and memories similar to a typical Nios II processor system. This design interfaces with each hardware component on the Intel® FPGA development kits, such as SDRAM, LEDs, push buttons, and an Ethernet physical interface or media access control (PHY/MAC). You can use the Nios II Ethernet Standard design as a starting point for your own embedded system by adding or removing components to meet your custom requirements.

This design is provided for the following 10 series Intel FPGA development kits:

  • Intel® MAX® 10 NEEK
  • Intel MAX 10 FPGA Development Kit
  • Intel® Cyclone® 10 LP FPGA Evaluation Kit
  • Intel® Arria® 10 SoC Development Kit

Hardware Design Specifications

  • Nios II processor core with JTAG debug module
  • DDRx SDRAM controller/HyperRam memory controller
  • Ethernet interface
  • JTAG UART
  • System timer
  • High-resolution timer
  • Performance counter
  • LED parallel I/Os (PIOs)
  • Push-button PIOs
  • System ID peripheral

Newer designs targeted for the 10 series FPGA device family and their respective development kits information are available in the Intel FPGA design store.

The use of this design is governed by, and subject to, the terms and conditions of the Intel® Design Example License Agreement.

Legacy Device

V series device family and below used design example based on Qsys hierarchical design which has a top-level system and two subsystems, namely: peripherals subsystem and Ethernet subsystem as shown in Figure 1.
This design is provided for the following Altera® development kits:

  • Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit, Cyclone® III Edition
  • Embedded Systems Development Kit, Cyclone III Edition
  • Stratix® IV GX FPGA Development Kit
  • Cyclone® V GT FPGA Development Kit

Hardware Design Specifications

  • Nios II processor core with JTAG debug module
  • DDRx SDRAM controller
  • Common Flash Interface (CFI) flash memory interface
  • Ethernet interface
  • JTAG UART
  • System timer
  • High-resolution timer
  • Performance counter
  • LED parallel I/Os (PIOs)
  • Push-button PIOs
  • System ID peripheral

Figure 1. Nios II ethernet standard block diagram.

Download the files used in this example:

Cyclone V GT Ethernet Standard design example and their respective development kits information are available in the Intel FPGA design store.

The use of this design is governed by, and subject to, the terms and conditions of the Altera Hardware Reference Design License Agreement.

Note: For more information on NicheStack TCP/IP Stack support and license, please refer to using NicheStack TCP/IP Stack – Nios II page.