Embedded Peripherals IP User Guide

ID 683130
Date 8/11/2025
Public
Document Table of Contents
1. Introduction 2. Avalon® -ST Single-Clock and Dual-Clock FIFO Cores 3. Avalon® -ST Serial Peripheral Interface Core 4. SPI Core 5. SPI Agent/JTAG to Avalon® Host Bridge Cores 6. Intel eSPI Agent Core 7. eSPI to LPC Bridge Core 8. Ethernet MDIO Core 9. Intel FPGA 16550 Compatible UART Core 10. UART Core 11. JTAG UART Core 12. Intel FPGA Avalon® Mailbox Core 13. Intel FPGA Avalon® Mutex Core 14. Intel FPGA Avalon® I2C (Host) Core 15. Intel FPGA I2C Agent to Avalon® -MM Host Bridge Core 16. Intel FPGA Avalon® Compact Flash Core 17. EPCS/EPCQA Serial Flash Controller Core 18. Intel FPGA Serial Flash Controller Core 19. Intel FPGA Serial Flash Controller II Core 20. Intel FPGA Generic QUAD SPI Controller Core 21. Intel FPGA Generic QUAD SPI Controller II Core 22. Interval Timer Core 23. Intel FPGA Avalon FIFO Memory Core 24. On-Chip Memory (RAM and ROM) Intel FPGA IP 25. On-Chip Memory II (RAM or ROM) Intel FPGA IP 26. Optrex 16207 LCD Controller Core 27. PIO Core 28. PLL Cores 29. DMA Controller Core 30. Modular Scatter-Gather DMA Core 31. Scatter-Gather DMA Controller Core 32. SDRAM Controller Core 33. Tri-State SDRAM Core 34. Video Sync Generator and Pixel Converter Cores 35. Intel FPGA Interrupt Latency Counter Core 36. Performance Counter Unit Core 37. Vectored Interrupt Controller Core 38. Avalon® -ST Data Pattern Generator and Checker Cores 39. Avalon® -ST Test Pattern Generator and Checker Cores 40. System ID Peripheral Core 41. Avalon® Packets to Transactions Converter Core 42. Avalon® -ST Multiplexer and Demultiplexer Cores 43. Avalon® -ST Bytes to Packets and Packets to Bytes Converter IP 44. Avalon® -ST Delay Core 45. Avalon® -ST Round Robin Scheduler Core 46. Avalon® -ST Splitter Core 47. Avalon® -MM DDR Memory Half Rate Bridge Core 48. Intel FPGA GMII to RGMII Converter Core 49. HPS GMII to RGMII Adapter Intel® FPGA IP 50. Intel FPGA MII to RMII Converter Core 51. HPS GMII to TSE 1000BASE-X/SGMII PCS Bridge Core Intel® FPGA IP 52. Intel FPGA HPS EMAC to Multi-rate PHY GMII Adapter Core 53. Intel FPGA MSI to GIC Generator Core 54. Cache Coherency Translator Intel® FPGA IP 55. Altera ACE5-Lite Cache Coherency Translator 56. Lightweight UART Core

37.1. Core Overview

The ability to process interrupt events quickly and to handle large numbers of interrupts can be critical to many embedded systems. The Vectored Interrupt Controller (VIC) is designed to address these requirements. The VIC can provide interrupt performance four to five times better than the Nios® II processor’s default internal interrupt controller (IIC). The VIC also allows expansion to a virtually unlimited number of interrupts, through daisy chaining.

The vectored interrupt controller (VIC) core serves the following main purposes:

  • Provides an interface to the interrupts in your system
  • Reduces interrupt overhead
  • Manages large numbers of interrupts

    The VIC offers high-performance, low-latency interrupt handling. The VIC prioritizes interrupts in hardware and outputs information about the highest-priority pending interrupt. When external interrupts occur in a system containing a VIC, the VIC determines the highest priority interrupt, determines the source that is requesting service, computes the requested handler address (RHA), and provides information, including the RHA, to the processor.

The VIC core contains the following interfaces:

  • Up to 32 interrupt input ports per VIC core
  • One Avalon® Memory-Mapped ( Avalon® -MM) agent interface to access the internal control status registers (CSR)
  • One Avalon® Streaming ( Avalon® -ST) interface output interface to pass information about the selected interrupt
  • One optional Avalon® -ST interface input interface to receive the Avalon® -ST output in systems with daisy-chained VICs

    The Sample System Layout Figure below outlines the basic layout of a system containing two VIC components.

Figure 132. Sample System Layout

The VIC core provides the following features:

To use the VIC, the processor in your system needs to have a matching Avalon® -ST interface to accept the interrupt information, such as the Nios® II processor's external interrupt controller interface.

The characteristics of each interrupt port are configured via the Avalon® -MM agent interface. When you need more than 32 interrupt ports, you can daisy chain multiple VICs together.

  • Separate programmable requested interrupt level (RIL) for each interrupt
  • Separate programmable requested register set (RRS) for each interrupt, to tell the interrupt handler which processor register set to use
  • Separate programmable requested non-maskable interrupt (RNMI) flag for each interrupt, to control whether each interrupt is maskable or non-maskable
  • Software-controlled priority arbitration scheme

    The VIC core is Platform Designer ready and integrates easily into any Platform Designer generated system. For the Nios® II processor, Intel provides Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) driver routines for the VIC core. Refer to to Intel FPGA HAL Software Programming Model section for HAL support details.