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

ID 683552
Date 9/24/2018
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.3. 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 soft-logic embedded in some IP cores that enable debug communication with the host computer.

You instantiate debug IP cores using the Platform Designer (Standard) IP Catalog. Some IP cores are enabled for debug by default, while you can enable debug for other IP cores through options in the parameter editor. Some debug agents have multiple purposes.

When you use IP cores with embedded debug in your design, you can make large portions of the design accessible. Debug agents allow you to read and write to memory and alter peripheral registers from the host computer.

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) provides the System Console with channel communication information. When System Console opens in the Intel® Quartus® Prime software or Platform Designer (Standard) while your design is open, any existing .sof is automatically found and linked to the detected running device. In a complex system, you may need to link the design and device manually.