LVDS i/o in a SystemVerilog Interface block

[fpgabuilder]

I need to instantiate LVDS interfaces in my top-level. I am planning
to use SV interface blocks. Altera's documentation suggests that LVDS
i/os should only be instantiated using a megafunction. But the
interface blocks do not allow hierarchy so I cannot instantiate a
megafunction inside the interface block.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[Jonathan Bromley]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 17:28:38 -0800 (PST), fpgabuilder wrote:

I need to instantiate LVDS interfaces in my top-level. I am planning
to use SV interface blocks. Altera's documentation suggests that LVDS
i/os should only be instantiated using a megafunction. But the
interface blocks do not allow hierarchy so I cannot instantiate a
megafunction inside the interface block.

Any thoughts on this?

This sounds to me like an inappropriate use of SV interfaces.
When you say "I am planning to use SV interface blocks", what
exactly do you intend? Interfaces are useful in certain
situations, but you definitely would not want to use them
everywhere in your design. In particular, you should avoid
using interfaces for the design's top-level I/O because it
will inevitably cause trouble with other tools in the flow.

It is not quite true that "interfaces do not allow hierarchy".
You cannot create a *module* instance inside an interface,
but you certainly can have an *interface* instance inside
another. However, nested interface instances are not
necessarily synthesizable.
--
Jonathan Bromley

 

[fpgabuilder]

On Mar 2, 1:39 am, Jonathan Bromley <jonathan.brom...@MYCOMPANY.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 1 Mar 2010 17:28:38 -0800 (PST), fpgabuilder wrote:
I need to instantiate LVDS interfaces in my top-level.  I am planning
to use SV interface blocks.  Altera's documentation suggests that LVDS
i/os should only be instantiated using a megafunction.  But the
interface blocks do not allow hierarchy so I cannot instantiate a
megafunction inside the interface block.

Any thoughts on this?

This sounds to me like an inappropriate use of SV interfaces.
When you say "I am planning to use SV interface blocks", what
exactly do you intend?  Interfaces are useful in certain
situations, but you definitely would not want to use them
everywhere in your design.  In particular, you should avoid
using interfaces for the design's top-level I/O because it
will inevitably cause trouble with other tools in the flow.

It is not quite true that "interfaces do not allow hierarchy".
You cannot create a *module* instance inside an interface,
but you certainly can have an *interface* instance inside
another.  However, nested interface instances are not
necessarily synthesizable.
--
Jonathan Bromley

Interesting. That is exactly what I was intending to do i.e. use
interfaces in my top-level i/os. What kind of tool issues you think
this will cause? I am still new to interfaces and system verilog in
general and was going through Sutherland, et. all's book SystemVerilog
for Design. We only use two tools in our environment... Quartus and
Modelsim DE. Quartus's documentation says it supports interfaces...
not sure if it supports hierarchy but I was going to try that as
well. In our environment where we do not have separate verification
and design teams most of the engineers prefer reuse across
synthesizable code and verification test benches. Therefore, it seems
like use of interfaces in top-level i/o is a good idea albeit if the
tool supports it which brings back to the point you raised.