Custom Logic Tutorial - Targeting the Design to the FPGA Device

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Now we are finished with the capture phase of our design, we need to specify which physical FPGA device we want to use – the target for our design and the end medium into which the design will ultimately be programmed and run. For this tutorial, we will target an FPGA device located on a 3-connector daughter board that is plugged into the Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01.

The easiest way to configure the project is to use Altium Designer's auto-configuration feature This will configure the project based on the exact hardware present in your Desktop NanoBoard system. Let's go ahead and configure our FPGA project.

  1. Ensure the 3-connector daughter board carrying the FPGA device to which the design will be targeted is plugged into the NB2DSK01 motherboard.
     
  2. Our simple accumulator design does not use any resources resident on plug-in peripheral boards. These boards can be left attached to the motherboard, or removed, as desired.
     
  3. Ensure your Desktop NanoBoard is connected to the PC via USB (or parallel) connection and is powered-on.
     
  4. Run the auto-configuration process on the project (CHC_Accumulator.PrjFpg). This can be done directly from within the Devices view (View » Devices View).
     

    Figure 1. Auto-configure direct from the Devices view.
     
    A configuration will be created and the relevant constraint files added and assigned to it, based on the hardware in your system. The resulting configuration and constraint files will be displayed in the Configuration Manager dialog, an example of which is shown in Figure 2.
     

    Figure 2. Resulting configuration and constituent constraint files (auto-configuration-related files will be automatically assigned).
     
    For our design we also need to include timing constraint information – for the design itself. Rather than create the required constraint file from scratch (which again is a topic for discussion outside of this tutorial), we will simply add and assign the required constraint file to the configuration we have just created.
     
  5. In the Configuration Manager dialog, click on the Add button associated with Constraint Files. In the Choose Constraint files to add to Project dialog that appears, navigate to, and open, the CHC_Accumulator.Constraint file, located in the \Examples\Tutorials\CHC Accumulator folder of your Altium Designer installation.
     
  6. The constraint filename will be added to the dialog. Simply click inside the associated checkbox – in the column for the configuration – to assign it to the configuration.
     
  7. Click OK to close out of the dialog.
     
  8. Save all source files and the parent project.

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