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

25.2. Functional Description

Each PIO core can provide up to 32 I/O ports. An intelligent host such as a microprocessor controls the PIO ports by reading and writing the register-mapped Avalon® -MM interface. Under control of the host, the PIO core captures data on its inputs and drives data to its outputs. When the PIO ports are connected directly to I/O pins, the host can tristate the pins by writing control registers in the PIO core. The example below shows a processor-based system that uses multiple PIO cores to drive LEDs, capture edges from on-chip reset-request control logic, and control an off-chip LCD display.

Figure 101. System Using Multiple PIO Cores

When integrated into an Platform Designer-generated system, the PIO core has two user-visible features:

  • A memory-mapped register space with four registers: data, direction, interruptmask, and edgecapture
  • 1 to 32 I/O ports

    The I/O ports can be connected to logic inside the FPGA, or to device pins that connect to off-chip devices. The registers provide an interface to the I/O ports via the Avalon® -MM interface. See Register Map for the PIO Core table for a description of the registers.