Accessing NanoBoard Resources from an FPGA Design

Related articles: NanoBoard NB2 Motherboard Resources, NanoBoard 3000 - Motherboard Resources

Normally you would use ports to connect from the nets in a design to the pins on the FPGA. However, since the connectivity from the FPGA to resources is fixed by the routing, there is no need to place ports and then define the net-to-pin mapping. Instead, Altium Designer provides special components that can be placed – allowing the resources to be easily incorporated in designs. These components, which can be thought of as design interface components and are commonly referred to as port components, are available in port-plugin integrated libraries, located in the \Library\Fpga folder of the installation. The different port-plugin libraries can be summarized as follows:

• FPGA NB2DSK01 Port-Plugin.IntLib – contains design interface components for all design-accessible resources located on the NanoBoard NB2 motherboard.

• FPGA NB3000 Port-Plugin.IntLib – contains design interface components for all design-accessible resources located on the NanoBoard 3000 motherboard.

• FPGA PBxx Port-Plugin.IntLib – contains design interface components for all design-accessible resources located on the PBxx peripheral board.

• FPGA DB Common Port-Plugin.IntLib – contains design interface components for all design-accessible resources common to, and located on, Altium 3-connector daughter boards (e.g. physical memory devices).

 
The following image shows the port-plugin library for the NanoBoard NB2 motherboard (FPGA NB2DSK01 Port-Plugin.IntLib), loaded into the Libraries panel. Port-plugin libraries are pre-installed, by default, as part of the Available Libraries.

Accessing port components from the Libraries panel.

The port components automatically establish connectivity between the resource and FPGA IO pins, allowing the same design to be built for different FPGA devices from different manufacturers. They are placed on the top sheet of the FPGA design project (*.PrjFpg), instead of ports. They are recognized as being external to the FPGA design by the presence of the parameter:
 
PortComponent = True
 
They are automatically converted to ports during synthesis.

Example port components.

Converting a Port Component to Standard Ports

It can often be clearer to represent the signal lines to the physical pins of the FPGA device using standard ports, rather than the port components. Altium Designer provides a conversion command to quickly change a port component to standard ports. From the schematic document, this command can be accessed by:

• Choosing Tools » Convert » Convert Part To Ports from the main menus and clicking on the required port component you wish to convert.

• Right-clicking over the required port component and choosing Part Actions » Convert Part To Ports from the menu.

After launching the command (and choosing the port component if applicable), the component will be converted into electrically equivalent ports.

Converted port components.