Over this series of blogs we have explored the Altera Agilex 5 devices and their architecture. Of course nothing beats getting hands on with a device and its tool chain so in this article we are going to explore the tool chain which we use to get started developing applications for the Agilex 5E Premium Development Kit.
At the heart of any Altera development is of course, Quartus Prime Design Software. If you are not familiar with Quartus Prime there are three editions available to developers each supporting a different range of devices and capabilities.
Lite – Provides an entry point for Altera’s high volume device families including the Max10, Cyclone 10 and Cyclone V.
Standard – Provides support for earlier device families such as Stratix V, Arria V and cyclone 10 LP.
Prime – Provides support for the next generation FPGA and SoC such as Agilex, Stratix 10 Arria 10 and Cyclone 10 GX devices.
While both standard and prime editions require a paid license, Quartus Prime Pro provides a no cost license for Agilex 5 devices. It is this no cost license we will be using to develop a our applications for the Agilex 5 Premium Development Kit.
When it comes to developing our solution we need multiple elements to help us create the overall solution
Quartus Prime Pro – This is the FPGA design software and it is where we will also configure the hard processing system (HPS). We can use Quartus prime pro to implement NIOS V processors within the programmable logic. Quartus Prime Pro will generate the board support packages required by the processors within the Hard Processing System.
Arm Development Studio for Intel SoC FPGA – This is used to develop applications which are executing on the processors within the Hard Processing System.
Ashling RiscFree IDE for Intel FPGAs – This is used to create and debug applications which are running on any NIOS V processors implemented within the programmable logic.
These tools when combined with an operating systems such as Linux or Zephyr will enable the developer to be able to create solutions for a wide range of applications.
As FPGA developers, Quartus Prime Pro is where we will be spending most of our time, Quartus allows is to not only synthesise and implement our design. It also provides features such as platform designer which allows for system level approach to development. By using this system level approach platform designer allows us to create system for deployment by connecting together IP modules, and custom RTL. In addition to platform designer, Quartus Prime Pro also enables developers to analyse and optimise the design as necessary to achieve timing, power and thermal performance with a range of tools from Timing analyser to design space explorer and the power and thermal calculator.
To get started creating our Agilex 5 design we first need to downloading Quartus Prime Pro version 24.1. To install Quartus Prime Pro I used the installer which allowed me to customise the installation with the device support I wanted.
With the tool installed the next stage is to obtain the no cost license from the Altera, we can obtain this from the intel FPGA Licensing Centre.
Having installed Quartus Prime Pro and obtained the license we are able to open Quartus Prime Pro and create a new project targeting the Agilex 5E premium development kit.
The first thing we will need to do when Quartus Prime Pro opens is to provide information on where the no cost license is located.
With the license configured Quartus Prime Pro will open and we are able to create new project which is targeting the Agilex 5E Premium development kit.
This design will include a NIOS V processor which has been implemented using a platform designer flow.
As the project creation completes we can take open the platform designer and explore the created application.
We can observe the Nios V M processors this is a microcontroller RV32 which supports embedded RTOS implementations.
Now we have worked through the tools and licensing and have created the example design in our next blog we will look at deploying it on the Agilex 5E premium development kit.
Embedded System Book
Do you want to know more about designing embedded systems from scratch? Check out our book on creating embedded systems. This book will walk you through all the stages of requirements, architecture, component selection, schematics, layout, and FPGA / software design. We designed and manufactured the board at the heart of the book! The schematics and layout are available in Altium here Learn more about the board (see previous blogs on Bring up, DDR validation, USB, Sensors) and view the schematics here.
Sponsored by Altera
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