10 Altera Corporation
Excalibur Device Overview
Software
Development
Tools
In a co-development environment where both the hardware and
software components constitute an integral part of the embedded
processor PLD design process, Altera provides seamless support
with SOPC Builder and Quartus II; ADS, GNUPro and third-party
development tools are also available.
See the Altera web site, http://www.altera.com, for details of the
software development tools.
Excalibur devices are compatible with any available tools
for the ARM922T from ARM or third parties.
SOPC Builder
SOPC Builder allows embedded system designers to create system-
on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) designs in a fraction of the time
traditionally required for embedded system-on-chip (SOC) design.
It provides an intuitive GUI that simplifies the definition and
customization of a user’s system. Designers select and parameterize
IP blocks from a drop-down list of communication, digital signal
processing (DSP), microprocessor, and bus interface cores. Then
SOPC Builder automatically generates all of the logic necessary to
integrate them and also uses the specified system information to
create appropriate VHDL or Verilog HDL code to connect the system
components together, resulting in an HDL description of the entire
system.
SOPC Builder automatically generates a software development
environment that matches the target hardware, saving days or weeks
of software design time, and jump-starts software development with
components such as the following:
■ Header files that define memory maps, interrupt priorities and
data structures corresponding to each hardware peripheral
■ Routines to access hardware peripherals in the system
■ OS/RTOS kernels with appropriate hardware drivers
SOPC Builder automatically generates a simulation model of the
system, a test bench for the system, and a full environment for
immediate system simulation.
Figure 4 on page 11 shows an example of an SOPC Builder screen.
