Specifications

CHAPTER 15: SYSTEM-LEVEL DESIGN
CREATING SOPC DESIGNS WITH SOPC BUILDER
232 ■ INTRODUCTION TO QUARTUS II ALTERA CORPORATION
Creating SOPC Designs with
SOPC Builder
The SOPC Builder, which is included with the Quartus II software, provides
a standardized, graphical environment for creating SOPC designs
composed of components such as CPUs, memory interfaces, standard
peripherals, and user-defined peripherals. The SOPC Builder allows you to
select and customize the individual components and interfaces of your
system module. SOPC Builder combines these components and generates a
single system module that instantiates these components, and automatically
generates the necessary bus logic to connect them together.
The SOPC Builder library includes the following components:
■ Processors
■ Intellectual property (IP) and peripherals
■ Memory interfaces
■ Communications peripherals
■ Buses and interfaces, including the Avalon
™
interface
■ Digital signal processing (DSP) cores
■ Software
■ Header files
■ Generic C drivers
■ Operating system (OS) kernels
You can use SOPC Builder to construct embedded microprocessor systems
that include CPUs, memory interfaces, and I/O peripherals; however, you
can also generate dataflow systems that do not include a CPU. It allows you
to specify system topologies with multiple masters and slaves. SOPC
Builder can also import or provide an interface to user-defined blocks of
logic that are connected to the system as custom peripherals.
Creating the System
When building a system in SOPC Builder, you can choose either user-
defined modules or modules available from the module pool component
library.