Third-Party Development Boards

Altium Universal JTAG connector

 

Altium provides information on, and support for, an extensive range of third-party development boards.

 

Third-party board support extends to the use of Altium's Universal JTAG Interface (pictured right), which enables your development board to interact 'live' with the LiveDesign-enabled Altium Designer solution. This support can include specific instructions for connecting the board (including images), constraint files and example projects that demonstrate the use of processor cores and virtual instruments.

View list of third-party development boards

Connecting to boards

For information on connecting the Universal JTAG Interface to your third-party development board refer to the section on "Connecting your board" in the LiveDesign Evaluation Kit Quickstart Guide (PDF).

Connecting the Universal JTAG Adapter (USB 2.0) to Altium’s NanoBoard-NB1

 

Building a constraint file

A constraint file is a text file containing a list of statements or lines known as constraint groups, each of which targets one or more objects and contains one or more constraints.

For information on building a constraint file refer to the section on "Creating a constraint file for your board" in the LiveDesign Evaluation Kit Quickstart Guide (PDF)

For additional information about creating and using constraint files refer to the following documents.

AR0124 Design Portability, Configurations and Constraints
AP0104 Re-targeting the design to the Production Board
TR0103 Constraint File Reference

Building an example project

Once you have connected your board and built a constraint file, we recommend that you read the below documents that provide information specifically relating to FPGA design, processor cores and embedded software development.

GU0123 An Introduction to Embedded Intelligence
TU0116 Getting Started with FPGA Design
TU0118 Implementing a 32-bit Processor-based Design in an FPGA
AP0103 Processing the Captured FPGA Design
GU0107 Using the TSK51x TSK52x Embedded Tools
GU0108 Using the TSK165x Embedded Tools
GU0109 Using the TSK80x Embedded Tools
GU0110 Using the PowerPC Embedded Tools
GU0111 Using the TSK3000 Embedded Tools
TU0123 Creating a Core Component

Note: Although references in some of these documents relate to using and downloading designs to Altium's NanoBoard hardware development platform, the overall concepts and process flows can be applied to your third-party development board.

Downloads

Download the Universal JTAG Interface Project (Schematic and PCB)