XP for NIOS2

Neither nios or nios2 have a MMU, so a full blown RTOS won't work.

Eric

Windows XP and Windows CE are targetted at *very specific* hardware. I.e., for example, Windows CE for a specific Palm PC have to b compiled with drivers specific for the hardware of that Palm PC. Moreover, that hardware (IO ports, screen, input pad, ...) have specific memory address, or at least, have a specific way o determining their address (ex: over PCI bus protocol for a PC)

Now, Windows is not only a core. It is a core with a lot o

information on the device hardware (drivers, ...)

So, you can not supply Windows CE for a bare FPGA CPU core. At least

if you design a specific SoC, with CPU, Memory, IO, Display, ..., tha Windows CE will have to be customized for that specific arrangment. This meen writing a lot of drivers. Then, since each design i unique (with specific set of hardware, memory mapping, ...), al those drivers will need to be re-written each time someone would us the CPU core along with it's associated hardware

So, saying 'Windows for Nios2' would be the same as saying 'Window

for Pentium4' (here, speaking of the bare P4 chip without it' associated PC environment)

I don't say that it's not possible to do the thing, but I seriousl

doubth Altera would release such OS (bare) with their cores. I als doubth that Microsoft would release their sacred OS source t anybody

However, if you desire to have an OS, you could check the Linu world... A lot are open-source, and you may even find ppl doin those sort of projects (Linux on FPGA board)

That's obvious.

I think we should terminate this thread, because I didn't know that NIOS2 is not free. I've seen (and downloaded) a free version of the NIOS2 Evaluation Package, but it seems it is very limited. And since $1000 is way too much for amateur purposes, I have just forgotten about NIOS...

Currently I would like to have a free and efficient 32-bit CPU... ;-)

Best regards Piotr Wyderski

Free , I don't know how efficient any of the cores are.

I believe one of the openrisc cores has actually been fabbed.

has gnu toolchain

tutorial for openrisc with xilinx

Alex

You want a "free and efficient" cpu, yet you want a Windows port for it?? If $1000 for a Nios2 development kit (includes all licenses and a powerful development board) is too much for you, then I'd recommend looking elsewhere for your OS. As you say, $1000 is a lot for amateur purposes, but so is WinCE - in real life, it is outside the range of most professional purposes.

There are, as pointed out by another poster, a number of cpu cores on opencores, and some of these have supporting operating systems (typically linux or ucLinux).

Yes. :-) Thanks to MS Academic Alliance it is possible. Of course the device will not be produced (i.e. there will exist a single specimen of it, used by myself).

Best regards Piotr Wyderski

If you are an academic, I believe Altera have special prices and deals for academic use. I have no idea of the details, but it's worth checking out. Of course, that doesn't get you any nearer wince on an FPGA - but I personally wouldn't consider using wince for anything but a PDA, even if it were completely free of cost. If you really do try to port wince to an opencores cpu, you are going to have a big job on your hands - while some of the opencores cpus have good toolsets, they are almost exclusively gcc-based, and aimed at either no OS at all, or open source OS's. Trying to get wince working will be "educational", however, which is perhaps your aim here.

David is correct -- Piotr if you are in any way involved with an academic institution please visit the Altera University website... there are specific contact/enrollment pages for several countries. I believe (but could be wrong on this one) that the email alias university --at-- altera --dot-- com works as well.

Back to the original topic: Yes, as already noted WinCE, like "full" Linux, needs a memory management unit, which Nios II doesn't currently offer. I cannot comment on future product features so please don't read anything into that statement either!

As far as whether Nios II is free: I would contend, that for the hobbyist all you need is a board, a PC, and a programming cable... and there are boards available that are not so expensive, from $99US on up. The downloadable evaluation core provides complete functionality of Nios II and all peripherals provided that you maintain a JTAG link to your host PC (tethered mode). The only thing missing is the Micrium RTOS. Without the JTAG link you get a time-trial that times out after several hours. I personally think this is quite generous considering the amount of development that has gone into the product over the past

5+ years, and the amount of interesting things one can do with the product while connected via JTAG cable.

Jesse Kempa Altera jkempa --at-- altera --dot-- com

Yes, I am, the institution is the university of Wroclaw, the faculty of computer science (I'm a Ph. D. student).

I will check it, thanks. BTW, we are looking for a small number of cheap Cyclone boards for an experimental course of FPGA programming and it seems that you have an appropriate model The second option is to purchase similar kits from Xilinx, but I think that Altera will be the winner because we are much more familiar with Quartus compared to ISE. But we don't need CPU IP cores.

The problem is that I (this time as a hobbyist) don't use development boards -- I buy raw Cyclone chips and mount them directly on their destination PCBs. And since the device should be portable (it's a high-performance software radio transceiver + a PDA), the free NIOS2 evaluation kit is not enough.

And that's the problem: I can't maintain a permanent JTAG link, because the device is designed to be portable (the FPGA chip will be configured via PS mode by an external MCU; its configuration images, among other things, are stored on a CompactFlash card).

I agree, but I would like to have a working amateur device, so there are only two possibilities: use a free, full-featured NIOS (which doesn't exist) or do not use NIOS at all...

Best regards Piotr Wyderski

Well, I am, but I don't want to abuse it, it will be unfair.

Why?

The complexity is not a problem, I do it in my spare time. It could take even several months, doesn't matter...

Best regards Piotr Wyderski

The university programs are great. We only currently use xilinx (not my decision).

I believe there is a port of wince for excalibur (Altera fpga with arm hardcore) was done by one of the Singaporean Universities.

There was a paper on it at a Programmable Logic conference - FPT2004 in December 2004, at UQ in Brisbane Australia. Should be available via IEEE.

Alex Gibson

wince licence is

Try uC/OS-II instead.

Hi Piotr,

Can you kindly send me an email so I have your address? A colleague of mine tried sending you an email to discuss the Altera university program in more detail but the email bounced.

Jesse Kempa jkempa --at-- altera --dot-- com