Embedded Peripherals IP User Guide

ID 683130
Date 10/24/2025
Public
Document Table of Contents
1. Introduction 2. Avalon® -ST Serial Peripheral Interface Core 3. SPI Core 4. SPI Agent/JTAG to Avalon® Host Bridge Cores 5. Intel eSPI Agent Core 6. eSPI to LPC Bridge Core 7. Ethernet MDIO Core 8. Intel FPGA 16550 Compatible UART Core 9. UART Core 10. Lightweight 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. EPCS/EPCQA Serial Flash Controller Core 17. Intel FPGA Serial Flash Controller Core 18. Intel FPGA Serial Flash Controller II Core 19. Intel FPGA Generic QUAD SPI Controller Core 20. Intel FPGA Generic QUAD SPI Controller II Core 21. Interval Timer Core 22. Intel FPGA Avalon FIFO Memory Core 23. On-Chip Memory (RAM and ROM) Intel FPGA IP 24. On-Chip Memory II (RAM or ROM) Intel FPGA IP 25. PIO Core 26. PLL Cores 27. DMA Controller Core 28. Modular Scatter-Gather DMA Core 29. Scatter-Gather DMA Controller Core 30. Video Sync Generator and Pixel Converter Cores 31. Intel FPGA Interrupt Latency Counter Core 32. Performance Counter Unit Core 33. Vectored Interrupt Controller Core 34. System ID Peripheral Core 35. Intel FPGA GMII to RGMII Converter Core 36. HPS GMII to RGMII Adapter IP 37. Intel FPGA MII to RMII Converter Core 38. HPS GMII to TSE 1000BASE-X/SGMII PCS Bridge Core IP 39. Intel FPGA HPS EMAC to Multi-rate PHY GMII Adapter Core 40. Intel FPGA MSI to GIC Generator Core 41. Cache Coherency Translator IP 42. Altera ACE5-Lite Cache Coherency Translator

11.1. Core Overview

The JTAG UART core with Avalon® interface implements a method to communicate serial character streams between a host PC and a Platform Designer system on an Intel FPGA. In many designs, the JTAG UART core eliminates the need for a separate RS-232 serial connection to a host PC for character I/O. The core provides an Avalon® interface that hides the complexities of the JTAG interface from embedded software programmers. Host peripherals (such as a Nios® II and Nios® V processors) communicate with the core by reading and writing control and data registers.

The JTAG UART core uses the JTAG circuitry built in to Intel FPGAs, and provides host access via the JTAG pins on the FPGA. The host PC can connect to the FPGA via any Intel FPGA JTAG download cable, such as the Intel FPGA download cable II. Software support for the JTAG UART core is provided by Intel. For the Nios® II and Nios® V processors, device drivers are provided in the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) system library, allowing software to access the core using the ANSI C Standard Library stdio.h routines.

Nios® II processor users can access the JTAG UART via the Nios® II IDE or the nios2-terminal command-line utility. For Nios® V processor users, you can access the JTAG UART using the juart-terminal command-line utility. For further details, refer to the Nios II Software Developer Handbook or the Nios® II IDE online help.

For the host PC, Intel provides JTAG terminal software that manages the connection to the target, decodes the JTAG data stream, and displays characters on screen.

The JTAG UART core is Platform Designer-ready and integrates easily into any Platform Designer-generated system.
Note: Partial Reconfiguration Region does not support any JTAG UART component.