Processor-based FPGA Design with the OpenBus System
A complex processor-based design, built on a schematic sheet only, can quickly become over-sized and hard to read. The design on the schematic also suffers from an inherent level of complexity, brought about by having to 'stitch' the bus interfaces of the various design components together. With a vast array of wiring, including additional clock and reset signals, mistakes can often creep in undetected until compilation.
To reduce the size and complexity of designs and, at the same time make creation of the design more intuitive and less prone to error, Altium Designer brings to the table its OpenBus System. The fundamental purpose of this system is to represent the processor, peripherals and related interconnections in a much more abstract way.
With Altium Designer's OpenBus System, the design can be built quickly and efficiently. The top-level schematic becomes a much more manageable sized affair and the main processor system is neatly packaged below in a nicely abstract document, both easy to build and easy to read.
Once the OpenBus System is built, the design process runs as normal for a processor-based design. The embedded software project is linked in the same familiar way. The processing of the design through the Devices view is the same. The OpenBus System document gets synthesized and expanded into the same form as a schematic-only based design. The only difference is that with the time saved on building and configuring the system, you can afford the luxury of an extra long coffee break...