Cyclone V E active serial load from N25Q00 QUAD SPI FLASH

Hi All,

I'm trying to use Micron N25Q00 1Gbit serial QUAD SPI FLASH to load Cyclone V E (A7) using active serial interface.

I currently have boards that have Cyclone V 5CEFA7U19C8 and are loading from N25Q064 via active serial interface, but we need a lot more FLASH.

Quartus II 13.1 does not support 1Gbit QSPI devices so I have my own QSPI controller (using the dedicated active serial pins) that can read and program N25Q00 from NIOS.

I verified I can reliably read and program both N25Q00 and N25Q064 devices.

I'm using .rbf file and downloading it to the QSPI via UART. I can also read back and verify the downloaded rbf. The rbf file is generated for active serial mode.

When I use a board with N25Q064 (64Mbit), Cyclone V boots and works just fine.

Downloading the same rbf file to a board with N25Q00 (1Gbit) does not work. The FPGA constantly tries to load over the SPI interface and fails.

I've tried both x1 and x4 mode and different clock speeds. They all work on the 64Mbit, but not on the 1Gbit part.

I also verified that the rbf file do not change based on the EPCQ size selected. I can load rbf file generated for EPCQ256 on 64Mbit part and it works just fine.

Besides memory size, all other parameters are the same between the 64M part and the 1G part.

The 1G part supports 4 byte address, but by default works in 3 byte address mode and looks like and can access the first 128Mbits. The FPGA image is compressed and is under 20Mbits so it does not cross segment boundary. Supposedly Cyclone V supports EPCQ256 which supports 4 byte address and the only difference is that it has one die vs. 4 dies for N25Q00.

Anybody has any idea if Cyclone V checks for the QSPI size when booting?

Any other thought or suggestions that can help understand the problem will be highly appreciated.

Thanks!