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UniPHY in QSYS

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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hi all, 

 

I'm working with the DE3 development board and I'm having trouble when trying to run a simple count binary software application in Eclipse. 

 

I'm getting a error message saying that "Downloading ELF Process failed". 

 

This happens when I setup the NIOS II to run from external memory while using the ALTMEMDDR with UniPHY in QSYS. 

(The ALTMEMDDR with ALTMEMPHY is no longer supported for the STRATIX III device in QII version 11.0sp1 and therefore the QSYS system cannot be generated using it.) 

 

However, when I specify the NIOS II to run from on-chip memory I'm able to download and run the application. 

 

I tryed communicating with the external memory using a reference design that comes along with the DE3 development board, and that worked. However, the reference design is using SOPC and the ALTMEMPHY which was generated in a earlier version of QII.  

 

I tryed porting as many of the parameters (timing etc) from the ALTMEMPHY in the DE3 reference design to the UniPHY in my design, however this does not seem to help in making the external memory work properly.  

 

 

If I could get some pointer here it would be appreciated.
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Does your design meet timing? Nothing stands out as wrong to me. I would also double check the Uniphy errata, you might be running into a bug that is possibly fixed in 11.1 

 

Once you get the memory interface working I recommend dropping the "Maximum Avalon Burst Length" down to 1 (Uniphy has internal burst merging built in) and then set the arbitration share of the Nios II instruction and data master connections to the SDRAM to be 8.
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Altera_Forum
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