Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorHi Jason,
The board you have ... http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-sv-gx-host.html Has a USB-Blaster II interface. That interface uses a Cypress EZ-USB FX2 which is a USB 2.0 high-speed (480Mbps) device. The older USB-Blaster device was only high-speed (12Mbps), so way slower. I have analyzed the performance of the USB-Blaster, but I do not have a board with a USB-Blaster II, so don't know its performance limits. So, the obvious first question is, are you using the on-board USB-Blaster II? The other thing to check, is to see if the Flash programming algorithm is dumb, eg. it might be erasing more Flash than it needs to. If the tools you are using output messages, read them, and see what Flash erase options are being used, i.e., sector or device? The other general comment to make is "Why program the flash?". If you have to change the firmware, just program the FPGA directly via JTAG. Sure you have to warm-boot your PC, but you have to re-boot when programming the flash anyway. If USB-Blaster download is "fast enough", then it does not really matter that the flash programming is slower (though 30 minutes would be way too slow for me too). Cheers, Dave
