EPCS Controller and CFI Flash

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originally posted by arunasirigere@Mar 22 2007, 10:12 PM

hi friends,

if i add epcs controller to my system in sopc builder i need not to do any data and address bus conections in the qurtusii but if i use cfi flash i will get those pins and i need to do pin assignments. why this?

is there any specific scenes where i must use only epcs controller or cfi flash?

thanks

aruna

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Hi Aruna,

The pins for an Altera EPCS device are always hardwired to specific pins on the Altera FPGA. This is why you cannot change the pins in SOPC. Since EPCS is a serial configuration device, there is only one data pin. With CFI Flash, you program the flash memory/read data in parallel, and therefore, you can choose where you would like to route this I/O on the FPGA, using either SOPC Builder or the Pin Planner in Quartus.

You can choose whether you want to use CFI Flash or an EPCS device, or both. From what I understand, you can store only one configuration image in an EPCS, (since they are generally smaller than CFI) plus any user programs or other data. With CFI, you can specify multiple configuration images at different base addresses (partitions), plus other data. Hope this helps.

~Shawn