Bringing the Chains Together - the NanoTalk Controller

The NanoBoard includes Altium's proprietary communications protocol, referred to as NanoTalk. This protocol defines and provides a communication path between a PC running Altium Designer and one or more NanoBoards. NanoTalk is implemented as part of the firmware running in an FPGA device on the motherboard. This device is commonly referred to as the NanoTalk (or NanoBoard) Controller.

The NanoTalk Controller manages the routing of the multiple JTAG chains that communicate with both the physical devices on the board and the soft devices contained within your design running on the target daughter board FPGA. It also handles the multiplexing of these various chains for transmission to the software running on the PC, over the parallel or USB link. This single JTAG link is demultiplexed by the system software.

Figure 1 illustrates the various JTAG chains, and the single JTAG link to the PC, for the Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01.

Figure 1. The NanoTalk Controller multiplexes the various device chains to present a single JTAG link to the PC.

NanoTalk has been designed to be plug-and-play, in the sense that all NanoTalk communications paths automatically configure when multiple NanoBoards are daisy-chained together, or user boards are attached to a NanoBoard. Altium Designer scans the NanoTalk system and automatically maintains a map of all Hard JTAG and Soft JTAG devices.