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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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8 years ago

HPS vs FPGA configuration

I am confused about the HPS configuration. Specifically in a Cyclone V device. The peripherals for the ARM CPU can be configured under Qsys, including SDRAM, UARTs, the SD card interface, et...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
8 years ago

Anand:

I am powering all the Cyclone together. We have no need for reduced power settings so that is not an issue.

What I am not understanding is how the various options of the HPS system get configured. If I am understanding it correctly, the HPS can operate before the FPGA portion has been configured. If so, it must be operating in some default condition.

Our board has been designed with a serial configuration FLASH prom for configuring the FPGA, so whatever the requirements are I am sure we can meet them. But there has been discussion among the engineers regarding the need for the serial FLASH (EPCQ128). Ultimately we want to be able to re-configure the FPGA portion via the HPS for remote update capability. So if the Serial FLASH prom is not needed we can eliminate it and save $30.

But I am still confused on the HPS configuration. Using the Qsys tools I specified the type of DRAM I was using and chose options for serial ports. These selections can't be applied until the FPGA configuration image is loaded.

So how does the ARM boot if configuration information hasn't been loaded yet?

Is there a default that is guaranteed to work?

Rod