3.5. Nios II system development#
Developing a microcontroller system for an FPGA can usually be divided into to main parts:
Hardware generation process
Build and configure the microcontroller system
Translate the system description into VHDL
Software generation process
Generate a board support package (based on the hardware )
Write and compile software application
For a general introduction and overview of the development flow watch the video below.
The video above shows some of the graphical user interface for the Software Build Tools. However, when developing the board support package and software for the main project in this course, we will used the equivalent command lines tools. This is also demonstrate in the EX5: A basic Nios II system. A short video providing information about how to use these command line tools is available below. It also shows how to configure the FPGA and download the application software to the Nios II system.