C2H Mandelbrot Design --------------------- This design requires the following development boards: - Nios Development Board Cyclone II Edition - Nios Development Board Stratix II Edition (RoHS compliant only) **************** Stratix/Cyclone II Information ******************************** This design requires the following daughter card if you wish to display the Mandelbrot fractal images: - Lancelot VGA IP Design Kit (www.microtronix.com) Installation: 1) Extract the archive contents to your harddrive 2) Import the application and system libraries provided in the "software" folder 3) Connect video card (Lancelot) to proto2 header (top header closest to power connector) 4) Open "hw_mandelbrot.c" and select the following functions for acceleration - hw_mandelbrot_engine_0 - hw_mandelbrot_engine_1 - .... hw_mandelbrot_engine_x (all of the engine functions) - hw_frame_stuffer 5) Accelerate each of the functions from step 4) with the following settings - Build software and generate SOPC Builder system - Use hardware accelerator in place of software implementation (for each accelerated function) 6) Compile the application project (will take a few minutes while the hardware and system is generated) 7) Compile the entire hardware project in Quartus (may take over half an hour) 8) Configure the device and download the compiled software Operation: - If you don't have a Lancelt VGA board you can run this design without it - The default mode of this design uses the hardware accelerator. To switch between modes use the following buttons: - SW0 Software with hardware accelerator enabled - SW1 Software only - SW2 Change the colour palette the next time the demo zooms out completely - SW3 Pause the demo, press once more to continue (note: While paused the other button states will be measured) - If you wish to disable the VGA output and want to measure the raw speed open "settings.h" and change "DISPLAY_PRESENT" to 0 - If you wish to view performance numbers from the console, set the Nios II terminal communication device to "jtag_uart" in the run settings Flash Files: All the necessary files for programming the flash memory on each board have been provided if you wish to run the algorithm without generating logic or compiling hardware. Simply open the Nios II command shell and navigate to the "Flash" folder provided for each design. Run the provided shell script with your development board connected to the first USB blaster connected to your host. for example: cd C2H_Mandelbrot/Stratix_II_RoHS/Flash sh Mandelbrot.sh ******************************************************************************** Expected Results: By default this design uses the hardware acceleration mode which results in the best overall performance. The frame rate should approach 60 frames per second (fps) when the demo is zoomed out completely. When the image zooms in, the amount of space within the Mandelbrot set typically grows which maps to the black colour. These pixels require the most amount of processing and represent where the Mandelbrot calculation converges towards infinity. The region where other colours are shown represent where the calculation converges within a fixed set of iterations. The number of iterations taken before the calculation converges determines the output colour you see on the screen.