Altera DE1 and DE2 - same UART?

Asked 7 years ago Modified 7 years ago Viewed 517 times

I wonder if the Altera DE1 and DE2 have the same UART? I got access to both the DE1 and the
DE2 and I see a similar question but the manual isn't specific which FPGA is applicable.
0
UART core Altera De2

fpga uart intel-fpga

Share Cite Follow edited Apr 13, 2017 at 12:32 asked Feb 28, 2017 at 11:39
Community Bot Niklas Rosencrantz
1 1,704 6 34 63

1 What are the components? You don't expect anyone to lookup, do you? Probably the core supports all
range of Cyclone FPGAs. – user76844 Feb 28, 2017 at 11:42

@GregoryKornblum I apologize for the inconvenience. I'm a hardware noob and I don't even know what we
mean when we say components. I'm basically trying to understand how I can learn the specifics and
memory mappings of an UART and hopefully also use it. My task is to model an UART and eventually
perform model-checking. – Niklas Rosencrantz Feb 28, 2017 at 11:54

1 Components- specific FPGA used on DE board. If you are writing your own UART, it definitely will not matter
for which FPGA you are doing it. So memory mapping is whatever you will decide. Yet note, that the term
"memory mapping" usually means that you have some CPU core or other mechanism with address space
and memory, while in FPGA this is not mandatory. – user76844 Feb 28, 2017 at 13:12

1 Answer Sorted by: Highest score (default)

When talking about FPGAs we need to distiguish between "hard cores" and "soft cores".

A "hard" core is a section of the chip dedicated to a particular function. Your design just tells the
1
synthisis tool how to hook it up.

A "soft" core is a core implemented in FPGA logic, it may be supplied by the FPGA vendor, it may
be bought from a third party, it may be freely downloaded from somewhere like opencores, it may
be written by yourself. Some "soft" cores may be written in generic verilog, others may be specific
to a device familily.
I have never seen a FPGA with a hard UART. SO you are going to have to use some kind of soft
implementation.

The DE1 and DE2 use the same FPGA family so it shuld be possible to use the same UART cores
on both of them.

The problem I have found with alteras cores is they assume you are using altera's avalon bus
system. I have found it's often easier to write serial transmit/receive code from scrath than to
figure out how to glue the rest of my design to an inappropriate bus system.

Share Cite Follow answered Feb 28, 2017 at 12:00

Peter Green
22.1k 1 39 82

I think Lattice have FPGAs with hard UARTs. Although they are so hard to use that no one does :)
– user76844 Feb 28, 2017 at 13:13

And I guess some of the FPGA SoCs probablly have UARTs on the processor side. – Peter Green Feb 28,
2017 at 14:58

Zynq has. But it's a very different story. – user76844 Feb 28, 2017 at 17:09