A–2
Chapter :
Preparing Design Files for Flash Programming
Arria II GX FPGA Development Kit, 6G Edition User Guide
July 2010
Altera Corporation
c
Altera recommends that you do not overwrite the factory hardware and factory
software images unless you are an expert with the Altera tools. If you unintentionally
overwrite the factory hardware or factory software image, refer to
“Restoring the
Flash Device to the Factory Settings” on page A–4
.
Preparing Design Files for Flash Programming
You can obtain designs containing prepared
.flash
files from the
Arria II GX FPGA
Development Kit, 6G Edition
page of the Altera website or create
.flash
files from
your own custom design.
The Nios II EDS
sof2flash
command line utility converts your Quartus II-compiled
.sof
into the
.flash
format necessary for the flash device. Similarly, the Nios II EDS
elf2flash
command line utility converts your compiled and linked Executable and
Linking Format File (
.elf
) software design to
.flash
. After your design files are in the
.flash
format, use the Board Update Portal or the Nios II EDS
nios2-flash-
programmer
utility to write the
.flash
files to the user hardware 1 and user software
locations of the flash memory.
f
For more information about Nios II EDS software tools and practices, refer to the
Embedded Software Development
page of the Altera website.
Creating Flash Files Using the Nios II EDS
If you have an FPGA design developed using the Quartus II software, and software
developed using the Nios II EDS, follow these instructions:
1. On the Windows Start menu, click
All Programs
>
Altera
>
Nios II EDS
>
Nios II
Command Shell
.
2. In the Nios II command shell, navigate to the directory where your design files
reside and type the following Nios II EDS commands:
■
For Quartus II
.sof
files:
sof2flash --input=<yourfile>_hw.sof --output=<yourfile>_hw.flash --offset=0x00AC0000
--pfl --optionbit=0x00018000 --programmingmode=PS
r
■
For Nios II
.elf
files:
elf2flash --base=0x08000000 --end=0x0BFFFFFF --reset=0x0A020000
--input=<yourfile>_sw.elf --output=<yourfile>_sw.flash
--boot=$SOPC_KIT_NIOS2/components/altera_nios2/
boot_loader_sources/boot_loader_cfi.srec
r
The resulting
.flash
files are ready for flash device programming. If your design uses
additional files such as image data or files used by the runtime program, you must
first convert the files to
.flash
format and concatenate them into one
.flash
file before
using the Board Update Portal to upload them.
1
The Board Update Portal standard
.flash
format conventionally uses either
<
filename
>
_hw.flash
for hardware design files or <
filename
>
_sw.flash
for software
design files.
