Nios II is a 32-bit embedded-processor architecture designed specifically for the Altera family of FPGAs. Having printf() statements in your code sometimes facilitates the debugging effort of your embedded system. However, using printf() statements in an embedded environment without the proper hardware support in your FPGA could be problematic. Specifically, the embedded code could potentially hang/block provided
Many times FPGA developers have needs to switch between different versions of a tool set running on the same machine. Having multiple versions of the same tool(s) installed on a given machine (in this case running Windows) is a perfectly accepted methodology. Here we show how to switch between Altera’s Quartus II version 13.1 and
Here’s a tip on how to download an Altera FPGA image from the command line, versus using the Quartus II GUI. Specifically, we show two types of downloadable files: JTAG Indirect Configuration File (.jic) and SRAM Object File (.sof). These commands have been tested using a Cygwin terminal. JTAG Indirect Configuration File (.jic): % quartus_pgm