Nuclei Eval SoC

Note

Nuclei CPU IP now with iregion feature will use totally new evaluation SoC, this SoC is different from previous Demo SoC, please take care.

Nuclei DemoSoC is now removed in 0.5.0 release, and please use evalsoc now.

Nuclei Eval SoC is an evaluation FPGA SoC from Nuclei for customer to evaluate Nuclei RISC-V Process Core, and it is a successor for Demo SoC.

Overview

To easy user to evaluate Nuclei Processor Core, the prototype SoC (called Nuclei Eval SoC) is provided for evaluation purpose.

This prototype SoC includes:

• Processor Core, it can be Nuclei N class, NX class or UX class Processor Core.

• On-Chip SRAMs for instruction and data.

• The SoC buses.

• The basic peripherals, such as UART, SPI etc.

With this prototype SoC, user can run simulations, map it into the FPGA board, and run with real embedded application examples.

If you want to learn more about this evaluation SoC, please get the <Nuclei_Eval_SoC_Intro.pdf> from Nuclei.

Supported Boards

In Nuclei N100 SDK, we support the following boards based on Nuclei evalsoc SoC, see:

• Nuclei FPGA Evaluation Kit, default Board when this SoC selected.

Usage

Note

In latest N100 CPU RTL generation flow, it will also generate an Nuclei N100 SDK to match CPU and EvalSoC RTL configuration, please use the generated Nuclei N100 SDK to evaluate your CPU and EvalSoC feature.

The generated Nuclei SDK by nuclei_gen will do the following tasks:

• Generate SoC/evalsoc/cpufeature.mk: which will define CORE, ARCH_EXT, QEMU_SOCCFG or SIMULATION default value.

• Generate SoC/evalsoc/Common/Include/cpufeature.h: which will define current cpu feature macros.

• Generate SoC/evalsoc/Board/nuclei_fpga_eval/Source/GCC/evalsoc.memory: which will define the sram/flash base address and size and mtvt and mtvec address.

• Modify SoC/evalsoc/Board/nuclei_fpga_eval/openocd_evalsoc.cfg: Mainly change workmem_base/workmem_size/flashxip_base/xipnuspi_base to adapt the evalsoc configuration.

If you want to use the generated Nuclei SDK by nuclei_gen In Nuclei Studio IDE, you need to zip it first, and then import it using RV-Tools -> NPK Package Management in Nuclei Studio IDE’s menu, and when creating a IDE project using New Nuclei RISC-V C/C++ Project, please select the correct sdk and version which you can check it in the <SDK>/npk.yml file, and in the project example configuration wizard window, you should click the SDK gen by nuclei_gen, and configure the Nuclei RISC-V Core and ARCH Extensions, Nuclei Cache Extensions according to your configured CPU ISA, and CPU feature defined in generated cpufeature.h. Currently you still need to modify IAR linker script by yourself, it is not automatically modified.

If you want to use this Nuclei evalsoc SoC in Nuclei N100 SDK, you need to set the SOC Makefile variable to evalsoc.

# Choose SoC to be evalsoc
# the following command will build application
# using default evalsoc SoC based board
# defined in Build System and application Makefile
make SOC=evalsoc all