Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition User Guide: Debug Tools

ID 683819
Date 12/04/2023
Public

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8.1.1. IP Cores that Interact with System Console

System Console runs on your host computer and communicates with your running design through debug agents. Debug agents are the soft-logic embedded in some IP cores that enable debug communication with the host computer.

You can instantiate debug IP cores using the Intel® Quartus® Prime software IP Catalog and IP parameter editor. Some IP cores are enabled for debug by default, while you must enable debug for other IP cores through options in the parameter editor. Some debug agents have multiple purposes.

When you include debug-enabled IP cores in your design, you can access large portions of the design running on hardware for debugging purposes. Debug agents allow you to read and write to memory and alter peripheral registers from the tool.

Services associated with debug agents in the running design can open and close as needed. System Console determines the communication protocol with the debug agent. The communication protocol determines the best board connection to use for command and data transmission.

The Programmable SRAM Object File (.sof) that the Intel® Quartus® Prime Assembler generates for device programming provides the System Console with channel communication information. When you open System Console from the Intel® Quartus® Prime software GUI, with a project open that includes a .sof, System Console automatically finds and links to the device(s) it detects. When you open System Console without an open project, or with an unrelated project open, you can manually load the .sof file that you want, and then the design linking occurs automatically if the device(s) match.