Nios II Avalon UART Serial Driver
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Name

CYGPKG_DEVS_SERIAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART — eCos Serial Driver for Nios II Avalon UARTs

Description

A Nios II hardware design can include one or more Avalon uart devices for serial communication. On typical hardware each uart requires an external transceiver chip on the board to convert between FGPA and RS232 voltage levels, so the actual number of uarts is more a property of the board than of the FPGA hardware design. CYGPKG_DEVS_SERIAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART provides an RS232 serial device driver for up to eight Avalon uarts in the design. It should be noted that in typical eCos configurations the first uart will be used for the HAL diagnostics and debug channel, either directly or via virtual vector calls to the RedBoot ROM monitor, so that uart should not be accessed via the serial driver.

Configuration Options

The Nios II Avalon uart serial driver should be loaded automatically when creating an eCos configuration for a hardware design which includes a suitable device, and it should never be necessary to load the package explicitly. The driver as a whole is inactive unless the generic serial support CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL_DEVICES is enabled.

For each uart in the h/w design the driver package provides a component, for example, CYGPKG_DEVS_SERIAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART0, allowing driver support for that uart to be enabled or disabled. When enabled this component contains a number of options related to that uart:

CYGDAT_DEVS_SERIAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART0_NAME
Each serial device should have a unique name so that application code can open it. The default names may be provided by the h/w design HAL, otherwise they are strings such as /dev/ser0 and /dev/ser1. Usually it is only necessary to change these names if the h/w design involves different types of uarts and hence multiple serial device drivers.
CYGDAT_DEVS_SERIAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART0_BAUD
If the h/w design supports variable baud rates then this option can be used to set the default baud rate. This may be different from the default set in the h/w design. It will be installed when the device is opened by application code. If the h/w design does not support variable baud rates then this option will be inactive.
CYGDAT_DEVS_SERIAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART0_BUFSIZE
The serial driver will maintain software buffers for incoming and outgoing data. The former allows data to continue to arrive even if the application is still busy processing the previous transfer, and thus potentially improves throughput. Also since Avalon uarts do not have fifos a software buffer reduces the risk of lost data. The latter allows the application to transmit data without immediately blocking until the transfer is complete, often eliminating the need for a separate thread. The size of these buffers can be controlled via this configuration option, or alternatively these buffers can be disabled completely to save memory.

In addition the package provides control over the compiler flags used to build the driver code and some support for serial testing. There are further options in the generic serial I/O package CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL which will affect this driver. For example CYGPKG_IO_SERIAL_FLOW_CONTROL and its sub-options determine what flow control mechanism (if any) should be used. Hardware flow control will only be available if the h/w design includes support for the RTS/CTS lines.

Porting

This serial driver package needs information from the h/w design HAL about the number of Avalon uarts and how they have been configured. Note that this information can also affect the implementation of the HAL diagnostics and debug channel in the Nios II architectural HAL package so the relevant CDL interfaces are provided there. Also note that in accordance with eCos conventions uart numbering starts with 0.

  1. The CDL interface CYGHWR_HAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UARTS should be implemented once for every Avalon uart in the h/w design.
  2. Avalon uarts can be designed with RTS/CTS support if desired. If a given uart has this support enabled then the h/w design HAL should implement the appropriate CDL interface, for example CYGHWR_HAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART0_RTSCTS. In the absence of RTS/CTS support the serial driver will not attempt hardware flow control on that uart.
  3. Avalon uarts can be designed with either a fixed or a variable baud rate. If the latter then the h/w design HAL should implement the appropriate CDL interface, for example CYGHWR_HAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART0_VARIABLE_BAUD.
  4. For each uart the h/w design HAL should define the base address, the interrupt vector, the uart's input clock, the default baud rate, the number of stop bits, the parity, and the word length. This information should come from the cyg/hal/nios2_hwconfig.h header.
  5. Default device names and baud rates can be provided using configuration options such as CYGDAT_DEVS_SERIAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART0_DEFAULT_NAME and CYGNUM_DEVS_SERIAL_NIOS2_AVALON_UART0_DEFAULT_BAUD.

Unlike more conventional uarts, with an Avalon uart the number of bits per word, the number of stop bits, and the parity support are all fixed when the hardware is designed. Any attempt to change these settings at run-time will fail. The baud rate may also be fixed in the h/w design, or run-time changes may be supported. If the latter then the baud rate will be constrained by the input clock and a 16-bit divisor register, so for example with a 100MHz input clock the lowest standard baud rate that can be supported is 1800.

The serial driver does not provide any support for DMA transfers so it ignores any end-of-packet register that may have been included in the h/w design. Only RS232 is supported, not RS485 networking. There is no support for the DTR, DSR, DCD or RI lines. If these are needed then the lines would have to be wired up to an Avalon GPIO unit and handled by application code.

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Chapter 117. Nios II Avalon UART Serial Driver Home Part XXXIV. USB Support