Guidance for using UART IP if Quartus

[YigalB1]

I wasn't able to locate guidance of how to generate the UART IP from Quartus, so I followed the process of UART generation, which was fairly simple. There were quite a few files generated, also I was expecting only Verilog files, assuming there is no hard macro inside (see attached).

I assume that UART_inst.v the instantiation, yet where can I see the memory mapped registers that the the verilog design should access when writing data to the UART, or reading from?

Is there a ready made example?

Also, does it make sense to control the UART with pure Verilog code to do the following activities: 

- After reset, get a stream of bytes from the host  to upload to a memory, and trigger a state machine on the FPGA

- When the activity is done, send few bytes to the host.

Or would it be better to use the NIOS processor to do these activities?

[sstrell · Accepted solution]

All is documented here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/683130/24-3/uart-core.html

The memory map is here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/683130/24-3/register-map-38176.html

The _inst.v is an instantiation template, not the actual instantiation.  You copy the template into your code and edit it to connect to the rest of your project.

As for your usage, that's up to you.  You can use the JTAG UART IP with Nios to send and receive characters while the design is running in hardware for debug.

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

Do you have any more follow up question on this?

Regards

Jingyang, Teh

[JingyangTeh_Altera]

Hi

I’m glad that your question has been addressed, I will now transition this thread to community support. If you have a new question, Please login to ‘https://supporttickets.intel.com/s/?language=en_US’, view details of the desire request, and post a feed/response within the next 15 days to allow me to continue to support you. After 15 days, this thread will be transitioned to community support. The community users will be able to help you on your follow-up questions.

Regards

Jingyang, Teh