DDR2 without NIOS

Altera_Forum · ‎06-23-2010

Hello,

in a project for my studies I am ask to get frames from vga port and to put them in a ddr ram: vert basic reading and writting in the memory.

Is there an other simple way to use the ddr (including its initialization) then using NIOS ?

I found some IP cores on opencores dot org but does not seems to be working.

best regards

trax

--

I am using de3 dev kit board

Altera_Forum · ‎06-23-2010

You most certainly do NOT have to use NIOS. The DDR2 controller is just that, a memory controller. You can use it inside SoPC Builder if you want to take advantage of the Avalon Interconnect Fabric, or you can instantiate the controller yourself in HDL and interface to it directly.

Jake

Altera_Forum · ‎06-24-2010

Sorry, I am very new to altera technologies. When I use SOPC Builder and add a ddr ram controler it ask me to add a Avalon Master.

All the demonstration programs use the NIOS II. Do you have any documents that could help me to do it without the processor?

Best regards

trax

Altera_Forum · ‎06-24-2010

Well do you even need SoPC Builder? If you've only got one block that's going to interface to the DDR2 memory, you can just create the controller without SoPC

builder.

If you do want to use SoPC Builder, you'll need to create your own Avalon Master component. In which case these would be helpful:

http://www.altera.com/literature/manual/mnl_avalon_spec.pdf

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/qts/qts_qii5v4.pdf

Jake

Altera_Forum · ‎08-08-2010

--- Quote Start ---

Well do you even need SoPC Builder? If you've only got one block that's going to interface to the DDR2 memory, you can just create the controller without SoPC builder.

--- Quote End ---

May I kindly ask to advise me how to do it? I need something similar for my project:

I have two modules:

1. the first module writes to the main memory sequentially,

2. the second reads it randomly or block randomly,

and I am using Terasic DE3 board.

I generated the project with DE3_SystemBuilder and in the main module got many I/O parameters:


////////// DDR2 (J9, DDR2 SO-DIMM) //////////
output                DDR2_A;
output                 DDR2_BA;
output                      DDR2_CAS_n;
output                 DDR2_CKE;
inout                  DDR2_CLK_n;
inout                  DDR2_CLK_p;
output                 DDR2_CS_n;
output                 DDR2_DM;
inout                 DDR2_DQ;
inout                  DDR2_DQS_n;
inout                  DDR2_DQS_p;
output                 DDR2_ODT;
output                      DDR2_RAS_n;
output                 DDR2_SA;
output                      DDR2_SCL;
inout                       DDR2_SDA;
output                      DDR2_WE_n;

What I really need is to convert them to


input ClkRead, ClkWrite; // clocks for read and write instructions
                      // or one clock with the switch for reading or writing
output ReadReady;   // on when the data is ready from the memory
input  Address; // depending on the word size,
                      // but I want to use 4GBytes if possible
inout  Data;    // can be ,  or even

I can read with considerably slow rate like 50MHz, but I need the total speed about 12-16GBit/s and due to large memory usage I cannot use internal on FPGA memory since it is only 5.6MBits.

Might somebody help or advise me to solve my task?

Thank you!

Sincerely

Ilghiz