How/where to get started?

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

 I've ordered a SockIT board to be able to test / demo some signal processor modules I've written. What I would like to do is to use the HPS side running Linux to stream data continously over ethernet to the signal processing cores in the FPGA and back.  I know (only) basic VHDL and I am a long-term Linux user and also know the concepts behind it, but have never written a kernel module.  What I wonder now is where to get started? Keeping all the different hardware/software components involved in mind, starting from scratch seems a rather cumbersome thing to do.  Are there some already working examples which I could use as a starting point? Also any kind of tutorial would be highly appreciated ;)  Thank you in advance for any kind of hints, pointers and your patience.  Thx, Reggi

[Altera_Forum]

There are support pages on rocketboards.org for the SoCKit. 

 http://www.rocketboards.org/foswiki/documentation/gsrdusermanualarrowsockitedition  The workshop lab files are available here  http://www.rocketboards.org/pub/documentation/arrowsockitevaluationboard/sockit_materials_13.1.zip

[Altera_Forum]

Hi Skravats, 

 Thanks for your pointers, I knew about the rocketboard site as well as the tutorial files. However to be honest, on the softwrae side Altera's Soc's look a bit dark - it is hardly possible to get started without beeing familiar with the whole Altera toolchain bottom-up.   I finally learned about Xillinux on the rocketboard wiki which allowed me to get started quickly - as they provide an intuitive interface between HPS and FPGA which is well documented. However I only use their "lite"-version which is fine for testing my VHDL code, as their fifo/dma interface is at leats 10k$ per seat.  So to sum it up, although I prefer Altera's toolchain when working with pure FPGA designs, the Soc experience so far was an disappointment. From what I've seen except a few quickly compiled samples, there is no really useful documentation or getting started tutorials.  No wonder xilinx gets all the buzz with zynq, although the device is pretty much compareable to altera`s offerigs ;)  Regards