ALTERA DE2 BOARD

A Schematic representation of the Altera DE2 board .

The following hardware is provided on the DE2 board:

• Altera Cyclone® II 2C35 FPGA device

• Altera Serial Configuration device - EPCS16

• USB Blaster (on board) for programming and user API control; both JTAG and Active Serial

(AS) programming modes are supported

• 512-Kbyte SRAM

• 8-Mbyte SDRAM

• 4-Mbyte Flash memory (1 Mbyte on some boards)

• SD Card socket

• 4 pushbutton switches

• 18 toggle switches

• 18 red user LEDs

• 9 green user LEDs

• 50-MHz oscillator and 27-MHz oscillator for clock sources

• 24-bit CD-quality audio CODEC with line-in, line-out, and microphone-in jacks

• VGA DAC (10-bit high-speed triple DACs) with VGA-out connector

• TV Decoder (NTSC/PAL) and TV-in connector

• 10/100 Ethernet Controller with a connector

• USB Host/Slave Controller with USB type A and type B connectors

• RS-232 transceiver and 9-pin connector

• PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector

• IrDA transceiver

• Two 40-pin Expansion Headers with diode protection

A more detailed information about the components used in the project:

SRAM

• 512-Kbyte Static RAM memory chip

• Organized as 256K x 16 bits

• Accessible as memory for the Nios II processor and by the DE2 Control Panel

SDRAM

• 8-Mbyte Single Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic RAM memory chip

• Organized as 1M x 16 bits x 4 banks

• Accessible as memory for the Nios II processor and by the DE2 Control Panel

Flash memory

• 4-Mbyte NOR Flash memory (1 Mbyte on some boards)

• 8-bit data bus

• Accessible as memory for the Nios II processor and by the DE2 Control Panel

Toggle switches

• 18 toggle switches for user inputs

• A switch causes logic 0 when in the DOWN (closest to the edge of the DE2 board) position

and logic 1 when in the UP position

Clock inputs

• 50-MHz oscillator

• 27-MHz oscillator

• SMA external clock input

BCD seven segment displays

8 seven segment displays for the user outputs.

The displays are modeled in common anode configuration,i.e, a logic 0 applied to one of the

segments of the board will lighten up the segment and a logic 1 will switch off the segment .

Working with the board

1. Using the internal clock:

The Altera DE2 board comes in with 3 sources for clock, two in-built and a provision for the

external clock. The internal clock has frequency 27 MHz and 50 MHz. Since faster execution is

required 50 MHz clock has been used in our project. Given below is a schematic representation of

the clock circuit and the pin number for 50 MHz clock is PIN_N2. To use the internal clock for

the program execution, during the pin assignment the pin number is specified against the variable

name used in the program.

2. Using the BCD seven segment display:

The BCD seven segment display has been used to view the corrected the values. Each display

consists of seven straight lines, which can be named as following for the convenience of program

execution.

The display is configured in the common anode configuration. A logic zero applied to a

particular segment, say segment a, will lighten up the segment .A logic one applied to a segment

will switch it off. Combination of logic 1 and logic 0 to the segment will aid the output of the

required value. For example to display 3 following inputs are given to the segments :

a=0;b=1;c=1;d=0;e=0;f=0;g=0. Thus the segment will look like:

Two of the 8 seven segment displays have been used for the display purpose in the program. The

following is the schematic circuit diagram of the display:

3. The switches and LEDs:

The board comes in with toggle and push button switches. Toggle switches have been used for the

program execution to display the pixel values and to initialize certain variables in the program. There are

18 toggle switches (sliders) on the DE2 board. These switches are not debounced, and are intended for

use as level-sensitive data inputs to a circuit. Each switch is connected directly to a pin on the Cyclone II

FPGA. When a switch is in the DOWN position (closest to the edge of the board) it provides a low logic

level (0 volts) to the FPGA, and when the switch is in the UP position it provides a high logic level (3.3

volts).

The above is a schematic representation of a toggle switch used in the Altera DE2 board.

There are 27 user-controllable LEDs on the DE2 board. Eighteen red LEDs are situated above the

18 toggle switches and eight green LEDs are found above the pushbutton switches (the 9th green

LED is in the middle of the 7-segment displays). Each LED is driven directly by a pin on the

Cyclone II FPGA; driving its associated pin to a high logic level turns the LED on, and driving the

pin low turns it off. The LEDs have been employed to indicate that program execution is over and values

can be examined by employing the toggle switches.

Schematic of LED in Altera DE2 board

The LED assignment is similar to the assignment method seen for the clock and the segment display.