Designing with the Nios II Processor

Course Description

This course will leverage your knowledge of Qsys system design and teach you to embed a Nios® II 32-bit microprocessor soft core into your FPGA design. This course focuses on the hardware aspects of using the processor with hands-on labs that get you up and running quickly. Through lectures and exercises you will configure the processor component, learn how the software build flow is incorporated into the hardware flow, perform debug and bring up of a design, simulate your Nios II based design in ModelSim, and create custom instructions to perform hardware acceleration of software functions. At completion of the course, you will have the tools necessary to immediately start using the Nios II processor v. 14.1 in your own designs or on a development kit and be productive right away.

At Course Completion

You will be able to:

  • Configure & compile a Nios II embedded processor design using Qsys & Quartus II software
  • Create, compile, run, & debug embedded software projects for the Nios II processor using the Nios II Software Build Tools for Eclipse (SBTE)
  • Verify your FPGA design functionality with the System Console & the Nios II SBTE
  • Simulate your Nios II-based system in ModelSim
  • Use Qsys to incorporate custom instructions into an embedded Nios II system
  • Design with a Nios II Development Kit

Skills Required

  • Background in digital logic design
  • Working knowledge of the Quartus® II design software
  • Working knowledge of the Qsys system integration tool
  • Some (minimal) knowledge of programming in C for embedded systems

Prerequisites

We recommend completing the following courses:

Follow-on Courses

Upon completing this course, we recommend the following courses (in no particular order):

Related Courses

Below are the related courses you may be interested in:

Applicable Training Curriculum

This course is part of the following Altera training curriculum:

 

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