Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorHello everybody,
I installed Quartus a long time ago and I do perfectly know how to program this with a programmer. But, at the end, this device aims to be programmed by a MCU because, I have said, it would be stupid to force anybody to have a programmer and a specific hardware for firmware update, especially if there already exists such a mechanism for any MCU on the market (I program mine using a provided bootloader, an embedded http server and a dedicated flash memory). Why FPGA firmware would be once for all defined, especially for a hardware base that is planned to have future features once in the field ? Now, it is written in the reference document that the CRAM can be programmed directly. That's all I need. I can not believe that writing a simplified programmer only for this purpose is a difficult task. For me, it should be trivial - and I'm pretty sure it is : sending a block of data. If this device is IEEE1352 compliant, this is trivial if the manufacturer provides the instruction format and data. What I can see instead, is that it seems difficult to do a simple programmer because of the lack of documentation (and some sort of reverse engineering), not because it is a difficult task. It is very easy for any modern MCU, why it smells like hell in the FPGA world ? Is it so different ? I don't think so. It is only because the documentation is dire. The example of the application note of silicon labs illustrates this magnificently - and I'm 99.9% sure that the FPGA programming is as easy as programming this venerable 8051 MCU. I can not use Cyclone or other FPGA, as I said, because of the packages (and they are much more expensive !). The MAX 10 is the only "powerful enough" FPGA in TQFP package. Lattice have something similar but a little too limited. But, it is straightforward to program using SPI interface : it is documented. I'm sure that some people would say "get the IEEE1532 specifications and write your code !'". It is probably OK, but every single time I had to do this, the time needed to do something that working is absolutely enormous regarding to the actual needed time with the right documentation. Especially because these publications have a very obscure rhetoric style and are too general - they are not well suited for programming documentation. And, of course, I don't want to pay $125 for it. I've continued to search for information, and I had to read the BSDL files to get a little something (the supported IEEE1532 instructions). This was the only way to get something. I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. In parallel, I took a look to new AVR MCU (I used to use Microchip). One datasheet. 1700 pages, everything inside. I found my old Intel Databooks from the early 90's. I used to use when I did x86 development and hardware. Thousands of pages with everything inside : pinouts, package drawing,time diagrams for everything, instruction set etc... And it was Intel ! Why Altera is so mediocre in this context (I didn't compare with Xilinx, but saying that the competitor is worse is an incredibly poor argument) ? But anyway, you get the point (at least I hope). Nobody tried to program an Altera FPGA with a MCU ? It seems to me incredible. And I'm sure that Altera has the right document somewhere, but where ? If Altera can not -or even worse doesn't want to- provide such generic document, that's it, I'll go for Lattice products. It's a shame because the MAX10 was ideal as a FPGA, but, at least, Lattice has some documentation. Jerome.
