Honored ContributorI'm working on the Altera's EP2S60 Development Kit, which has the Stratix II FPGA on board. Now I am planning to save my design firmware on a compact flash (CF) card, so that the FPGA can bootload different firmwares by changing the CF card easily. However, I haven't found any related information and have no idea at all. Does anyone have the similar experience of this issue? Thanks!
Honored ContributorAre you just talking about the software, or the FPGA configuration too?
AFAIK Altera FPGAs can't configure themselves from a CF directly. If you want to do that you'll need an external controller that can read the CF and configure the FPGA through Passive Serial or Passive Parallel protocols.Honored ContributorYes, you obviously need an external controller. The MAX II PFL MegaFunction code can be used as a starting point for the FPGA configuration part. The download part isn't that easy, because at least Quartus PFL JTAG protocol is performing low level flash operations that are not suitable to write to a CF card. It should be possible to emulate the PFL operation, however.
Honored ContributorThanks!
I think that it is a suitable scheme to use a configuration controller (MAX II or microprocessor) and a CF card for the non-volatile configuration. In FPP mode, it should work. However, my current development board S60 connect the controller with a flash memory together. In this case, I might need change the configuration of the controller to apply for mine.
