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How to create negative pin for LVDS in Cyclone II?

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Hello, 

 

I want to test the ALTLVDS Megafunction on an Altera NIOS II Development Kit, which includes the CycloneII EP2C35F672C6N FPGA. 

 

The intention is to check if I can replace an existing LVDS Transmitter Device on a PCB through an ALTLVDS Megafunction implemented in a Cyclone II FPGA. The FPGA is already on the PCB and after a redesign I could use some of the remaining LEs to implement the LVDS interface to drive a LCD Display. The LVDS Transmitter has 3 channels and a clock channel.  

The deserialization factor is 7. 

 

The test set-up is the following: 

 

Intel XScale module with parallel output ports for the Display -> parallel cable to prototyping pins of the NIOS II Development Kit -> LVDS cable from the prototyping pins of the NIOS II Development Kit -> LVDS Display from NEC (640X480, 10,2") 

 

The first problem that came up is, that in the Quartus Pin Planner I can´t create more than one or two differential pairs.  

I´ve got 4 Pins of which i wanted to change the I/O Standard to LVDS. 

As a result I should get the following output pins:  

(In my example) 

tx_out[2] and tx_out[2](n) 

tx_out[1] and tx_out[1](n) 

tx_out[0] and tx_out[0](n) 

tx_outclock and tx_outclock(n) 

 

Instead of this I get the following Differential Pairs: 

 

tx_out[2] and tx_outclock 

tx_out[1] and tx_out[0] 

tx_out[0] and tx_out[1] 

tx_outclock and tx_out[2] 

 

Does anyone have any idea why the pin planner doesn´t creates a positive and a negative pin for each output channel after changing the I/O Standard to LVDS? 

 

I´ve already been searching in various Altera Application Notes, Manuals and Handbooks, but I haven´t found anything helpful till now. 

 

If anyone has a good tutorial on how to create a LVDS Display Interface in a Cyclone II FPGA it would be helpful too. 

In the SERDES Transmitter/Receiver (ALTLVDS) Megafunction User Guide I didn´t found the answers to my questions. 

 

Thanks for any ideas! 

 

Greetings 

 

Stefan
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
685 Views

You don't have to assign the negative pin, it's assigned by the fitter automaticly.

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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
685 Views

I talked to an FAE who is a former employee of Altera and he told me, that my problem is a bug in Quartus 8.0 (SP1). To solve the problem I have to delete the db directory of my projekt and change the pin-assignment in the QSF File by myself. 

 

@FvM: Thanks for your efforts!
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Yeah, I noticed the same thing in Cyclone III. Quartus II does not create a differential pin but instead uses one of my pre-existing pins. 

 

Strange. Seems like a large bug. 

 

Thanks for the tip.
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