Testing PCI Interface on FPGA

Question

My boss has given a code for testing PCI express on an Altera board. The code consist of several c code files having instructions such as reading Bios, setting some registers, writing to buffers etc. My job at present is to see the functionality of the code by running it. I am new to FPGA and I am unable to understand what tools, compilers etc will I use for compiling it for the FPGA.

Since it is a C code so I am sure I cannot use the same environment as that of Verilog/VHDL. Can I get some hints as to what compilers are available for compiling C code for testing various interfaces of an FPGA?

Thanks and regards

H

Answer 1

If the FPGA board is just connected through a standard PCIexpress interface, it isn't that hard to create a Linux driver to simply access a couple of registers. This might even be easier to do than getting some old DOS-based drivers to work.

I did some work on this in a pre-project to my masters thesis some years ago - if you're interested, it's available here: http://loejer.dk/files/FORK,%20pdf.zip

Answer 2

It sounds like the intent is that you connect the PCI-E card to a normal computer with a PCI-E slot, then run the test software on the host computer, so it will talk to the board via PCI-E, and exercise the board from the host, collect data on the host, and so on.

Such code will almost certainly be quite non-portable. You'll probably need to ask what system it's for (or examine the code to find hints -- e.g., if it starts with #include <windows.h> that's a pretty fair indication that it's for Windows).

The OS it's written for will give at least an 80% (or so) clue about what compiler to use -- if it's for Windows, chances are pretty good that it's intended for Microsoft's compiler. If it's for Linux, there's an even better chance that it's for gcc/g++. If it's for MacOS, it's probably for g++, but if it's really new, might target Clang.