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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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19 years ago

Custom PFL ciruit

Hello,

I need to develop PFL loader circuit, which loads the pof data from flash rom to cyclone II device. The cyclone is configured by passive serial. The PFL megacore has enough function, but it is too large for us. Does anyone know how the pof data can load into the cyclone II device? Should I just write the whole pof data into the cyclone II?

Thanks,

5 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    19 years ago

    Hello Dalon,

    Thank you very much for your suggestion!

    --Shige
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    19 years ago

    if the cyclone device has access to program the flash, you can use a nios to program the flash, and the code to configure the FPGA from the cpld isn't much more then a few couters, the size of which depends on your input clk and the fpga you are configuring.

    there is a bunch of logic in the PFL just to program the flash, i believe you can, in quartus 7.1, select to only have the fpga configuration logic.

    --dalon
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    19 years ago

    I believe it is because it is written by software people rather then hardware people.

    Just fully understand the memory to be read, and the part to be loaded, then write the code in HDL and you will be good to go.

    Trust yourself, you will do fine!
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    19 years ago

    Hello Brad,

    Thank you for your response. Yes, I'd like to implememt the loader part of PFL and more logic into smalllest MAX II(EPM240), but the loader occupies almost 240LEs. I'm wondering why it takes so much because the loader does only reading flash and p/s conversion.

    Thanks,

    Shige
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    19 years ago

    I haven't done much with the parallel flash loader, but I did notice in the documentation (I think it was an app note) that you can configure it only for flash memory interface or only for FPGA configuration to save space instead of providing both functions simultaneously. Did you consider this when you determined that the PFL is too large for your application?