OpenBus Tutorial - Creating the OpenBus System

Now we have the FPGA project set up, we can concentrate on building the OpenBus System. Before we do, we should identify just what exactly it is that we want to describe using the OpenBus System document.

If you open the schematic document DSF_Mandelbrot.SchDoc, from the original FPGA design project, you will see that the main component of the design is the area summarized in Figure 1. This area contains the processor and peripherals, as well as the interconnect and bus mastering components.

The remaining circuitry on the original schematic sheet is simply the interface between the peripherals and the physical pins of the FPGA device, the extents of which are depicted by the use of port components. Any additional logic devices will reside in this area of the design. This is circuitry that will, in fact, remain on the top-level schematic sheet of our new FPGA project. We'll get to that later in the tutorial.

Figure 1. Identifying the device content for the OpenBus System.

To fully create our OpenBus System, we now need to: